


the fine print

by minarchy



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Bookstore AU, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bookstores, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Drama, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Things I Wrote That Got Way Out Of Hand
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minarchy/pseuds/minarchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/2292.html?thread=1557236#t1557236">this prompt</a>:<br/>Erik is the <s>disgruntled</s> customer, and Charles is the bemused, far-too-smart-to-be-normal bookshop owner. Charles makes recommendations, Erik scoffs at them but secretly enjoys them. Eventually they fall in love and everyone has hearts in their eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in which erik is a single father and charles tries to get him to read huxley

**Author's Note:**

> because it was requsted: a crude [floor plan](http://i.imgur.com/zbT9K.png) of charles' house. you'll have to forgive my terrible handwriting.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He took in the look of fierce independence that the elder of the two was aiming at him, one that was only ever based on insecurity and lack of trust, and the way that he was sitting with his body angled protectively towards his dark-haired sibling; the way that Hank was hovering nervously in the background, knee twitching within his slacks and hands twisted in his pockets, glancing repeatedly between the boys and Charles. He saw the evidence of multiple breaks of the elder's nose, the bruises that faded out of his hairline, the thinness of the younger's arms and the depth of his eyes.
> 
> He hung up his mackintosh on the hanger behind the door, kissed Raven on the cheek and stole her half-drunk cup of tea.
> 
> "Chips for dinner?" he asked, leaning against the counter.

"Charles. Seriously, _Charles_."

Charles looked up from his comparison charts (out-of and back-dated stock; reorganising the shelving for optimum sales opportunity; profits and loss based on previous orders around the holiday season) to see Raven leaning around his office doorframe in a manner that she evidently thought was at least a little surreptitious; Charles thought that she should really be old enough by now to know that hanging into a room by your fingertips didn't really allow you to blend in.

"What, Raven?" He rubbed a thumb against the groove between his eyebrows. It had been a long day already, and he still had several tedious, paper-work filled hours ahead of him. Just the thought alone was enough to tighten his headache.

"There is the _cutest_ guy in the shop." She beamed at him, practically sparking mischief and glee. "Like, you would _not believe_."

"Okay," he said, raising his eyebrows and tilting his head forwards to look up at her, a habit picked up from a university professor who would glare at his students over the top of his glasses. "And you're telling me this, because..."

Raven gave him her 'don't shit with me, Xavier' look. "He's hot. You're sexually frustrated. It's _meant to be_."

"Raven!" he started, equal parts shocked and embarrassed (always, _always_ , by her upfront manner, because she will forever be the lost little girl he hid in his wardrobe and snuck food to before the fire).

"Charles!" she mimicked, and rolled her eyes at him. "Seriously, though, he looks like he could use some -" she waggled her fingers at him, "scholarly intervention."

"Innuendo is banned," he told her, but pushed himself to his feet and made his way past precariously-stacked piles of paper and lovingly-wrapped, carefully-stored first editions that needed specialist repair work before they could be sold to shove her gently back into the shop.

"Tell that to Sean," she retorted, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she bounced back to the front desk.

Charles stepped out onto the shop floor, and looked about him for the mysterious customer that Raven was so insistent that he talk to. There was a figure lingering around the science fiction section, and, seeing as the shop was otherwise deserted, logic dictated that it could only be him. Of course, logic and Raven rarely went hand-in-hand, Charles was willing to overlook the universal errancy, just the once.

The man was taller than Charles by a good half head, in slacks and a leather jacket; and was running one long finger down the spine of the Cauvet-Duhamel translation of _We_. He had excellent posture.

"You might want to try this," Charles said, pulling _Brave New World_ off the opposite shelf. The man whipped around so fast Charles was amazed that he didn't crick his neck. "If you liked Zamyatin."

The man glanced down at the book in Charles' outstretched hand, and quirked an eyebrow at it. "I cannot buy that," he said, eyes flicking up to meet Charles' gaze. "The language is filthy."

Charles grinned, delighted. "Not as bad as _Fanny Hill_ ," he said, cheerfully. "Am I to assume you've already read this, then?" He twitched his wrist, indicating the book.

"No," the man said, shaking his head firmly. "I was once subjected to _Crome Yellow_ , which was more than enough, thank you."

"But this," Charles pressed, still smiling; and fairly certain that he caught a glimmer of amusement in the other man's eyes to match his own, "is a _seminal piece_ of English literature."

"All the more reason to avoid it," he replied. "I have little faith in critics."

Charles laughed, and extended his hand. "Charles Xavier," he said. When the other seemed hesitant to reciprocate, he added, "how about I stop trying to sell you Huxley, in exchange for your name?"

The man grinned, a quick flash of teeth, and took his hand. "Erik Lehnsherr."

"Well, Erik," Charles said, enjoying the way the name rolled off his tongue. "How about I make you a cup of tea, and we'll try to find a middle ground between Zamyatin and Huxley. I don't doubt you've read _Nineteen Eighty-Four_?"

"Naturally," Erik said, checking his watch distractedly. "And I'm afraid I can't stay. I need to collect my children. From school."

"Oh." Well. That was not what Charles had been expecting, at all; it threw him, somewhat, although he was certain that he was still in with a shot at this man. He himself, after all, enjoyed the company of both men and women; why should it be so surprising to him that someone in his peer group should have children? "Well," he said, recovering swiftly, knowing how appearing shocked can make someone feel uncomfortable, "do come back soon, Erik. I would _love_ to debate further the merits and demerits of dystopian literature with you."

Erik blinked at him, surprised, before smiling again, the expression genuine and slowly spreading across his face. "Of course," he said. "I still need to buy a book," he added. "It would be wonderful to own something that wasn't made of cardboard and wax paper again."

Erik left, and Raven appeared at Charles shoulder, buzzing with interest and excitement,

"So?" she asked, dragging out the vowel. "What was he like? Did you get his number? _Are you going on a date_?"

"Raven," Charles said; "you really have to stop getting overexcited every time I talk to a customer you deem aesthetically-pleasing."

"But I'm all about the aesthetics," Raven said, cocking her head and grinning at him. Charles sighed, long-suffering.

"We spoke for all of five minutes," he said, "during which I discovered that he doesn't like Huxley –"

"Sacrilege!" Raven cried, clutching her heart.

"His name is Erik and he has children."

A beat. "Erik, huh?" Raven said, and Charles smiled at her determined effort to ignore the fact that Erik was a _father_ and that almost certainly poked holes in all of Raven's plans to tie him to a horse and send him off into the sunset. " _Just_ Erik, or is there an equally mysterious surname?"

"Lehnsherr." Charles rolled his eyes as Raven smirked lecherously.

"Oh, I see," she said. " _German_. You always did like the Nords." The door tinkled open, and she spun about to return to the front desk; the shop was rather haphazardly organised, seeing as Charles had based it upon his own personal categorising system, and Raven and Hank tended to file things into their own subsections without consulting either him or each other, and thus she as almost always required to direct an unfortunate customer to the section they were after was located (which, sometimes and more often than not, was in more than one place).

"Germany is not part of Scandinavia!" Charles called after her. She ignored him, and he wondered when he had joined his bookshelves as background furniture.

"Never mind, my loves," he said, under his breath, glancing sideways ( _Ourika_ and _Breakfast of Champions_ ; a combination that pained Hank, who liked to organise alphabetically within the subset, and annoyed Raven, who would have to direct a customer from one side of the shop to another to find _The Cannibal_ or _Player Piano_. He had been meaning to get in more stock for her and Hank to arrange the more popular novels as they chose, but he kept getting distracted by Moira's latest discoveries from her grandfather's attic – including, most delightfully, a first-edition of Berkeley's _New Theory of Vision_ ). "You understand that not everything is about sex. Well," he added, touching the bounding _The Trumpet-Major_ as he passed, "maybe not you, Hardy."

His gaze fell upon Wyndham (Raven had refused to let _Triffids_ onto the shop floor for years, until the Harbinson adaptation forced her to reconcile her differences with Wyndham and try and force people to read the original). _The Chrysalids_ was only a short novel, the shelf-copy a hardback by necessity, but it still fitted neatly into his hand. He ran the pad of his thumb down the closed pages, feeling the paper whisper across his skin, and smiled.

"Raven!" he called. "I'll be in my office if you need me!"

She waved over her shoulder with one hand, nose buried in Shevchenko with reference dictionaries spread across her desk, mouthing the words slowly and carefully to herself as she cross-checked with the English translation he had given her for her birthday.

Still smiling, he wound his way back to his desk. His charts were still open, tables and colour-coding blinking up at him from off-white recycled paper (Hank bought the stationary), and he looked at them for a moment or two, considering just _how important_ it was that he finish the accounts that day.

Opening his desk drawer, he slid the papers into it. _Not enough_ , he thought, flipping open his notebook and uncapping his pen.

He wrote the title across the top of the page in neat, precise handwriting, pausing momentarily to consider what Raven's reaction would be should she find it, and deciding that she probably already knew. He finished the title, and settled back in his chair, casting his gaze about his office.

 

" _Recommendations for Erik_ ," Raven read aloud, when the six of them were eating dinner in the shop's tiny kitchen, sitting knee-to-knee and elbow-to-elbow around the table.

"Who's Erik?" Alex asked, smirking at Charles around his fork.

"Viking god who came in the shop today," Raven said, promptly, before Charles could respond.

"How was work?" Charles asked, pointedly changing the subject. The four of them grinned at him, but let it pass.

"Fine," Sean said, shrugging. "Alex didn't get into a fight, I didn't break anything. All in all, a good day."

Charles laughed into his tea. "Good," he said.

"That's what I said," Sean said, the corner of his mouth cantering up despite himself. The others groaned and Alex threw a crust of his bread at his head.

"What're you going to recommend for him, then?" Hank asked.

"Traitor," Charles said, but he was smiling. "I thought you were supposed to be on my side."

"Geeks unite!" Sean and Alex high-fived.

"Well?" Raven prompted, raising an eyebrow at her brother.

"We're all on tenterhooks," Sean said.

"He seemed to like dystopian fiction," Charles said, unable to keep the slightly defensive tone from his voice and not entirely sure why, "so it's things like Bradbury and Nabokov."

"And Karp and Dick," Alex said, having stolen the list from Raven. Sean snorted. "Trying to send subliminal messages, are we, Charles?"

Charles squinted at him, confused. "I understand 'dick'," he said, "but what on _Earth_ has 'carp' got to do with innuendo?"

"I thought that was banned," Hank said.

"Only on the shop floor," Alex said.

"I checked," Sean added. "On your list. So there."

 

Charles' flat was situated above the bookstore, both for convenience and cost; a lot of his family fortune had been poured into renovating the books that he had already owned and purchasing others to fill the gap in his collection. Much of what remained he had in a trust fund for Raven, in case anything should happen to him, or to the business.

(Sometimes, when they hadn't had a good month, he would pay her out of this money, and then would be racked with guilt for weeks afterwards until the shop had gleaned enough to replace her wages.)

Luckily, Charles' natural sales ability and Raven's keen business sense had kept them above board so far; that, and their fortuitous friendship with Hank McCoy, who had stammered and blushed his way through their first encounter (because Raven had appeared, perpetually curious, at Charles' shoulder, clad only in a towel and still dripping from the shower) but had made himself invaluable without really seeming to mean to. He maintained the electricals and always managed to fix the boiler within an hour, no matter how loud Thunder Horse had been galloping; he and Charles would sit up for hours over synthesising an appropriate synthetic binder-glue and Rousseau. Raven flirted with him, gently and evidently charmed by his blushing awkwardness, but Charles' was fairly certain that it hadn't gone any further than that.

Charles had never really thought that he would ever need anybody more than just Raven; that their flat would ever feel a little too big (not that it had any right too, as Raven pointed out on many occasions, what with all the piles of books and old newspapers and requests from rich, distant people for something particularly rare). It wasn't that he didn't enjoy the company of others – his university days were more than testament enough to that; he had just never expected to _wish_ for it.

Whilst Raven had probably had more to do with it than anything, Charles found Hank working his way deeper into the groove of their lives, slotting into the shop like he was made for it; like he was something that it had been missing all along. He brought a different energy to the place, although Raven despaired of having two obsessives to cajole to eat and sleep. He shuffled into their lives with multiple degrees and a genius level IQ and a deep, passionate love of knowledge that had thrummed against Charles' from their first conversation.

(It was supposed to have been an interview, following the advert that Raven had placed in the window – without Charles' prior knowledge or consent – for an extra pair of hands around the shop; but had rapidly dissolved into an argument about whether Darwin's religious background influenced _The Origins of the Species_ and his prior and subsequent writings upon evolution, and had furthered into a debate over whether science and religion could ever lie comfortably side by side.

Charles had taken pro, quoting Einstein – 'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind'; where as Hank had argued that they were too far opposed, despite how close they might be in all actuality, and that as much as they would wish it, they would never reconcile the differences between them; and he cited the monkey trial. They would have continued, Charles' didn't doubt, long into the night, if it hadn't been for a loud bang and the lights flaring out, followed by Raven's call of "oops!" down the staircase.)

And then, he had gone out of town for work, to track down a particularly elusive copy of de La Fayette; and, upon his return, he discovered that Raven and Hank had adopted a pair of brothers, who stared at him with thin, shadowed faces when he had entered the kitchen. Raven had looked from them to him, and tilted her chin up defiantly.

He took in the look of fierce independence that the elder of the two was aiming at him, one that was only ever based on insecurity and lack of trust, and the way that he was sitting with his body angled protectively towards his dark-haired sibling; the way that Hank was hovering nervously in the background, knee twitching within his slacks and hands twisted in his pockets, glancing repeatedly between the boys and Charles. He saw the evidence of multiple breaks of the elder's nose, the bruises that faded out of his hairline, the thinness of the younger's arms and the depth of his eyes.

He hung up his mackintosh on the hanger behind the door, kissed Raven on the cheek and stole her half-drunk cup of tea.

"Chips for dinner?" he asked, leaning against the counter.

Scott clearly had no memory of having chips before, if either he or his brother ever had, and he dug into the salty, greasy newspaper cone with a kind of unconstrained wonder and awe, his eyes half-closing as he sucked on his burned fingers. Stream rose from their little huddle, standing on the pavement outside the chip shop, bathed in the yellow-white light of the fluorescents and breathing in air thick with the scent of salt and vinegar.

Alex had been wary of the food, reluctant to begin eating; but he had started once he saw that Charles, Raven and Hank were all tucking in. He ate like he was afraid that someone was going to take his food away from him (and, Charles mused, watching him out of his peripheral vision, that wasn't necessarily far-fetched), shoulders hunched over the food and body angled automatically to shield Scott.

They finished, and the empty, grease-sodden paper was tossed into the nearest bin; Scott looked up at Alex with purposefully wide eyes, because they were obviously heavy, and he put an arm around his brother's shoulders.

"I trust you've got a room made up for them?" Charles said, voice low in Raven's ear. She flushed, slightly, but her voice when she spoke was stubborn, offensive, defensive.

"Is that going to be a problem?"

He pulled her towards him with one arm, and pressed a kiss into the hair above her ear.

"Not at all, darling. If you do it again, though, I'd appreciate a heads-up."

Raven smiled, slid her own arm around his waist as they lead the way back to the flat.

"Is this what we're doing now?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him, keeping her voice low enough for the words to be indistinguishable to the boys that followed behind. "Taking in needy teenagers? Because you might want to worry about getting a reputation."

Charles laughed, the sound sudden and unexpected and almost too loud in the quiet, bouncing back to them off the sharp edges of silhouetted buildings and the cold, crisp shadows within doorways and lining alleys.

"I think it's a little late to be worrying about my reputation," he said, and Raven snorted. "Although I do appreciate the concern."

She tightened his grip on his waist, leaning her head on his shoulder, and they stepped in time down the darkened streets.

 

Honestly, despite the sudden arrival of Alex and Scott, Charles hadn't thought that there would ever be a similar incident; but he hadn't anticipated Sean, who had appeared from the neighbouring roof one evening, whilst Charles was taking a cigarette. He had landed badly, stumbling forwards and scraping one knee against the stone before shoving himself roughly to his feet. He stopped, abruptly, upon seeing Charles.

His face was bloodied, his lip split open and leaking down his chin and one eyes dark and swelling shut. He was very pale, and in the half-light from the waxing crescent moon his freckles stood out in harsh contrast against his almost-luminous skin. Charles met his gaze, just as surprised, until the boy's head jerked around over his shoulder at the sounds of pursuit.

"Do you want to come inside?" Charles asked, pleasantly. The boy spat blood onto the ground at his feet and squinted up at him.

"Why?" he asked, after a moment.

Charles eyed his injuries pointedly. "Head wounds bleed an awful lot," he said. "You don't have to. Just an offer to patch you up and get some food inside you. Get you sober. Then, you can be on your way, if you like."

He'd hesitated, visibly, balancing on the balls of his feet and Charles had been almost certain that he was going to bolt, before he'd nodded and taken several nervous steps forward.

"I don't trust you," he'd told Charles, as he held the door open to allow the boy to go first. "Just so you know."

"That's fine," Charles said. "I wouldn't expect you to."

Even so, he wasn't exactly surprised to find Sean curled up on the sofa in the morning, snoring gently into the crook on his elbow; but he was gratified.

"I thought this _wasn't_ becoming a thing," Raven said, when she appeared ten minutes later.

"I believe I said that I wasn't worried about my reputation," Charles answered.

 

He didn't ask where they came from. It didn't matter. Hank, he knew, was so crippled with student debts that he had been living in a bedsit about five metres square; but Alex and Scott never said where they'd come from before Hank had found them being harassed by a police officer and had intervened. Sean never spoke of why he had been running across rooftops in the dead of night, beaten up and high as a kite.

It didn't matter and, after a little while, the others came to realise this as well. Alex started laughing. Sean would balance fruit on his nose. Scott would sit on Charles' lap to be read _The Snow Queen_ or _Peter Pan_ or _The Woman In White_ , and the others would inexplicably appear in the lounge whenever he did, to listen to the story even whilst pretending that they really, really weren't.

His life sat in a happy, contented glow at the bottom of his stomach; and he wondered if this was what it felt like, what the books always alluded to but Charles had never understood.

Family. Home. All the things he'd craved as a child and thrown himself into fiction and schoolwork in order to escape the way that his mother found him irksome to her social life, to the way that Kurt had swooped into his home – his _father's_ house – and replaced everything that Charles should have been with himself and Cain. Everything thing thought he'd when Raven had broken into his kitchen and he would have promised her anything, in that moment, to ensure that she would stay.

(And then his mother had died and Raven had curled around him in his bed as he shuddered with not-tears; and then the fire had ripped through the basement and Cain had gone back to his mother, and Charles had gone to boarding school with his trust fund and Raven as his sister, and it had all been _perfect_.)

He'd had to catch himself several times, when coming down the stairs and hearing them laughing in the kitchen, or when walking down the hall and seeing the empty bedrooms steadily filling with things and stuff; had to physically stop and blink and remember that this was okay to fix his fingers into and accept as his own, to remember to breathe to ease the tightness in his chest.

Raven noticed, of course. She would sit with him on the side of his bed, tuck her head under his chin and they would breathe in time, just like when they were kids hiding from the strangers in his own home that he was supposed to call _family_.

They were all adjusting to not being alone, any more.

"Give it time," he told Hank, when Sean had smashed all of the crockery in a fit of frustration because he couldn't understand the maths problem that Hank was trying to walk him through (Charles had been adamant on them getting at least the most basic qualifications. It was his only rule).

"I know," Hank sighed, plucking porcelain carefully from his hair. "It's strange for all of us." He caught Charles' wrist as he made to leave. "We do appreciate it, you know," he said, voice earnest and serious, making sure to meet Charles' eyes. "What you've done, taking us in like this. All of us. Even if Al– some of us can't say it."

Charles smiled, squeezed Hank's forearm in return. "Thank you," he said, and then had to clear his throat. Hank dropped his gaze, hurriedly. "That means a lot," he continued, having got his voice under control. "I –"

"It's nice," Hank interrupted, gently, because Charles, usually so eloquent, had no idea what to say. "Not being alone."

"Yeah," Charles agreed. He clapped Hank on the shoulder, and slipped out of the kitchen.


	2. in which there is coffee and danishes and raven has an opinion concerning the gaiety of eight-year-olds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Erik," he said, grinning, nervousness wreaking havoc with his ability to look sane. Erik was dressed in a loose, well-worn, collarless cotton shirt and slacks, which was the most dressed-down Charles had ever seen him "You left this behind." He held out the wallet, that Erik took with a slightly suspicious look. He had paint stains on his trousers and flecked over his knuckles and the insides of his wrist.

Typically, for a Monday, rain was sheeting down, heavy droplets ricocheting off the pavement in millions of tiny pieces. The large glass windows in the front of the shop looked like a water feature, the outside world blurred and swirled in the water that was sluicing across it; it pounded dully on the roof tiles, and solid and booming on the corrugated iron sheeting that they were using as a stop gap for the holes above the boiler room.

Charles had spent the morning frantically lining the storeroom with tarpaulin and bin liners, wrapping the most delicate books in tissue paper and then plastic before carefully sealing them in the hope that it would be enough to protect them from the encroaching damp. Despite the rain refreshing the humidity, something that Charles was always grateful for, there was simply _so much_ rain that cold moisture sat on everything. Scott had run a grocery errand for Hank earlier, and had been complaining ever since that there was _no way_ he was going to get dry. Charles registered the air temperature and the risk that Scott posed to his books by being _damp_ everywhere, and had thrown him in the bath. He had managed to sell Moira's _New Theory of Vision_ , and had fetched a decent amount for it; they could, for once, spare the extra water cost.

Hank was baking (at least, that's what Charles assumed he was doing, because there was flour behind his ear and in the crease at the side of his nose, and he didn't know whether flour was used extensively in savoury cooking as well) when Charles retreated momentarily to the kitchen.

"Slow day?" he asked, as Charles leant against the edge of the table whilst the kettle boiled.

"It's pouring down out there," Charles said, squinting at the window as if he could sharpen his gaze through the whorls that the rain had created. "I don't see as how we're going to have very much custom."

Hank made a noise in his throat that sounded simultaneously non-committal and agreeing, frowning as he carefully measured his various ingredients.

"Oh," he said, as Charles shifted around him to find a mug and the coffee. "Your Erik came in earlier. Dropped of a request for, um, _Le Comte_ , I think. I wrote it down. The slip should be on your desk."

Charles hadn't been to his desk all day; his tax returns kept giving him judgmental looks. Also:

"'My' Erik?" he said, raising an eyebrow as he stirred in sugar.

Hank's head was ducked, and he outwardly retained the appearance of focussing on his cooking, but Charles caught the slow spread of a smirk tilting the corners of his eyes. He rolled his eyes, fondly, and laid his hand on Hank's shoulder as he left.

The slip was, indeed, on his desk, placed carefully on top of the piles of invoices and receipts. Charles carefully avoided looking at the tax forms, instead snatching up the slip and retreating hurriedly from the room.

 _Erik Lehnsherr_ , the slip read, in Hank's abysmal doctor-esque scrawl. _Le Comte de Monte Cristo. Calmann-Lévy 19C_.

Charles paused and leaned back against the door, thinking. He was certain that he had a copy of the Calmann-Lévy edition of _Le Comte_ , that he had been restoring some months ago and had put into storage rather than onto the shop floor: as an antique, it was more specialist than most of Charles' passing trade. He wondered why Erik had wanted an edition from this particular timeframe, and was a little amazed (although he really shouldn't have been, at this point) that Hank had been able to remember that they had one in stock.

"Raven," he said, catching hold of her arm as she passed him, "have you seen that Lévy ed of _Le Comte_ around at all?"

She blinked, thinking. "Oh, you mean the one that preachy –" she stopped when Charles gave her a look, the corner of her mouth tilting up and her eyes rolling almost imperceptibly, "that woman brought in the other day? I _think_ you probably put that one in 'rare and fixed' pile in the storage closet."

 _Huh. That would make sense_. Smirking, Raven tweaked his nose gently and returned to the shop floor.

It didn't take him long to ascertain that he did, in fact, still have the edition he was after, and locate it beneath Déscartes; after which, it was heading towards ten o'clock and he hadn't done any work with Scott yet.

The boy was sitting in the kitchen, watching Hank cook and answering his gentle questions on what he had learned the week before in a serious tone. Sometimes, Charles couldn't get over how different the brothers were: Alex, who was brash and loud and over-defensive, and who was easily bright enough to get good grades but couldn't see the _point_ ; and Scott, who followed in Alex's shadow like a puppy and who would listen to his lessons with a fiercely concentrated look, as if frowning at the page would allow him to absorb it better.

And then they would laugh simultaneously at something Sean did, or play basketball with Armando from the café where Alex and Sean worked, or give Charles identical looks of exasperated disbelief when he waxed lyrical over someone they'd never heard of; and then, yeah. Charles could see it.

("Alex," he'd asked, once. "Why won't you try?"

Alex had been heading out the door for his shift, but he stopped in the hallway, shrugging his jacket on over his jumper.

"It's a bit late for me," he said, mouth twisting diagonally into a humourless, self-deprecating smile.

"Alex –" Charles tried to reason with him, to explain that it's _never too late_ , but Alex just slapped his arm and reached behind him for the doorknob.

"Get Scott sorted, yeah?" he'd said, tugging his hood up over his head. "He was always the smart one."

Still, there was his One Rule, and after several long, unfulfilling sessions Hank offered to take on teaching Alex for a bit, to allow Charles to try and deal with Sean's hyperactivity without distraction. It was a little galling that Hank had so much more success than Charles' did, even if Alex was curt and snide when frustrated – but Hank had graduated university at fifteen, and was well used to such comments.

"How do you do it?" he asked Hank, who'd leant back in his chair and shrugged, ever depreciative.

"He doesn't respond to authority figures." Which, really, shouldn't have surprised Charles at all. "Especially male ones, I would guess; they've probably made a habit of sticking around only as long as they want and then leaving him – and Scott – again."

Charles exhaled through his nose, smiling at Hank. "How're you so smart?"

Hank blushed, colour flaring along his cheekbones and behind his ears, and he ducked his head; but Charles saw the smile that he was fighting dance around the corners of his mouth, and knew that he was pleased, really.)

"Scott?" he said, sliding into the seat opposite him. "Did you do your reading?"

 

Later, Charles was sitting behind the desk, reviewing the list of book requests when the door chimed open, and he heard:

" _Du bist wirklich zu alt, um so getragen zu werden_."

" _Aber Papa_ –"

" _Chockachockachockachocka_ –"

" _Pietro! Hör auf damit! Komm her_!"

And he looked up to Erik Lehnsherr shaking a large umbrella out before sliding it into the stand and closing the door; he was wearing a dark great coat, and had a young girl on one hip. She was missing a shoe. A fair-haired boy of similar age had been playing with a steel miniature of a steam engine, but was now hovering about Erik's legs.

"Erik!" Charles was surprised, but delighted in equal measure; he heard Raven give a barely constrained squeak under her breath and he saw her disappear out to the back from the corner of his eye.

"Charles," he said, inclining his head. "I must apologise for Wanda's foot; she managed to lose her shoe somewhere between the train and the station exit."

Charles smiled at the girl, who was staring at him with bright, intelligent eyes from her father's arms. Her hair was as dark as her brother's was fair. "That's not a problem," he said, "but I reckon that your foot must be getting cold, just in your stocking-soles."

"Wanda," Erik said, looking down at his daughter, " _Stell dich bitte vor_."

She blinked her huge, blue eyes, and held out her child's hand. "Wanda Lehnsherr," she said.

"Charles Xavier." Charles shook her hand, grinning. Erik pressed gently on the back of the boy's head, and he stepped out of his father coattails to extend his hand to Charles as well.

"Pietro Lehnsherr," he said. "Pleased to meet you."

"Charles Xavier." He met their introductions like-for-like, keeping his tone polite and formal even as the smile tugged wilfully at the corners of his mouth. "And the pleasure is all mine, Pietro."

Raven appeared at his elbow, and gave him a blatant and pointed look. "This is my sister, Raven," he said, generously. "She's completely harmless. You have my word."

Raven scrunched up her nose in annoyance, and prodded him hard in the ribs. "I was just coming over to say that Hank's made Danish pastries, if you're interested. I'm not going to give _you_ any now, though," she smiled at the Lehnsherr's, "although you're more than welcome to have some."

Charles rolled his eyes, smiling. "There's coffee – or hot chocolate" (directed at the children) "– included in that offer," he added.

The corner of Erik's mouth tilted up. "Well," he said. "That sounds like an offer I can't refuse."

"Thank you!" the twins chimed, in unison, and Charles was worried momentarily that Raven might spontaneously combust from sheer glee before she made herself scarce into the kitchen – presumably to fetch the pastries.

Charles leant his elbow on the desk, and his chin in his palm, and smiled at the children. "So," he said. "Do you have a favourite book? Wait, let me guess (I'm good at this): _The Wind In The Willows_?"

"We're eight," Pietro said, flatly. "Not four."

Charles' face split into a delighted grin before he could stop himself (because he probably, _really_ , shouldn't be encouraging this kind of behaviour in other people's children).

"My apologies," he said, not quite able to control his smile. "I stand corrected. Perhaps you'd be willing to enlighten me?"

" _Kim_ ," Wanda said.

" _Silas Marner_ ," Pietro said, at the same time. The twins glared at each other, and Charles was almost worried that he was going to hurt himself, his smile was spread so wide.

"That's a depressing book," Raven said, re-emerging from the back with a tray; she indicated with a raise of her eyebrows and a flick of her eyes that they could take it on the arm chairs in the corner, and Charles darted around the desk to lead the way. "Haven't you read, like, _Treasure Island_ , or something?"

"My favourite book," Charles said, "when I was a boy, was _Can't You Sleep, Little Bear?_ "

Raven snorted. "That's _still_ your favourite book, Charles. You know it by heart. Now, if you want the _best_ children's book –" She disappeared into the stacks; Wanda and Pietro watched her go, hovering around Erik's chair. Raven bounced back towards them and sat on the floor in one fluid motion, her legs folding in front of her so that she was sitting cross-legged. She opened the book she'd brought into her lap, and the twins edged closer, sitting on their knees next to her so they could see.

"This is too young," Wanda said, staring at the colourful illustrations and the large print type.

"Never," Raven declared, grinning. "This is _The Adventures of Little Tim_! They will never grow old."

The twins sat a little closer, until they were flush against Raven's thighs, as she read aloud from the book. Charles glanced sideways at Erik, who was watching them with a mingled look of confused surprise and cautious delight.

He lead Erik out into the stacks, keeping the children in sight; Erik didn't specifically request it, but Charles had caught the way that the other man had kept his children close at all times. It reminded him of Alex and Scott, the same fierce, protective flare that burned at the forefront of every action.

"Here," he said, stopping and carefully tugging a frequently-repaired edition of The New Poetry; "this is one of our most popular, in as much as it keeps getting resold back to us after a few months." He grinned, a flash of teeth in the musty air and the silence, broken only by the steady voice of Raven and the clattering of rain against the windows. "I don't think people quite get it."

"You mean that they are not intelligent enough to understand," Erik said, smirking and turning the book over between long, dextrous fingers.

"Now, that just makes me sound snooty," Charles said, without heat.

"An unjust assumption?" And somehow he managed to make the question into a barb, dulled only by Charles' infinite capacity to overlook such comments and the steady spark of amusement in Erik's eyes. Charles attempted a glare, but found it ruined by the way his mouth insisted on smiling.

"I think I will take this," Erik said, holding the book out to Charles. "It will make a welcome break from prose."

"Rupert the Bear is in poetic form," Charles said, faux-innocently. Erik grumbled from behind him, and Charles found the noise almost impossibly endearing.

"Do not speak to me of that book," he said. "There were three months of my life when the children would not hear anything else."

Charles laughed, a expulsion of breath as he rang the book up. Erik leaned against the counter on one arm, turning to watch where the twins were still sitting next to Raven, listening happily to her as she read to them. She was extraordinarily good at it, with different and distinct voices for all of the characters; her long, blonde hair was pulled over one shoulder to hang over into her lap, and Charles could see her mouth moving as she read.

"She's always been good with children," he said, wrapping and sealing the book against the weather before handing it to Erik. "Raven, I mean."

"So I can see," Erik said, glancing back at him. "Do you have younger siblings? Or children?"

Charles tilted his head, slightly, unsure of whether the children fitted into either of those categories, really; he certainly didn't think himself appropriate as a father figure, but – he felt more responsible for all of them that he would associate with a sibling.

"Scott's twelve," he said, after a moment; "he's the youngest, and Raven reads to him a lot. He's long-sighted," he added, catching Erik's look. "It hurts his eyes to read for too long, and he enjoys the stories so."

And then he realised that Erik's look may have been more to do with his word choices ( _he's the youngest_ ) than any concern over Scott's reading age.

"I see," Erik said, before Charles could figure out how to explain when he didn't even know how to define his strange mix of a family.

"Did you find that book?" Hank said, walking past from the back and nodding at Erik as he passed.

"Oh, yes; thank you, Hank." He leant forward on the counter. "Your copy of _Le Comte_ – the one you requested? – I'm afraid it's still undergoing some repair work, so it's not available today."

"That's fine," Erik said, shrugging fluidly. "I was hardly expecting it to be; honestly, I thought you'd have to hunt one down, so –"

"We normally wouldn't have one of that era in stock." Charles pressed the tips of his fingers together. "But we had a recently had a woman sell us an unwanted copy that she'd bought for her granddaughter, without realising that it wasn't a French translation of the Victorian edit."

Erik laughed, soft and low in his throat. "So, she didn't approve of sexuality of the Dumas original, I'm guessing?" he said.

"One would assume," Charles said. "She complained rather volubly about the – oh, what was it – 'crass language and lewd behaviours exhibited by the characters', as if it were to be something unexpected of a Dumas novel."

Erik smiled at the counter, tilting his head to look over at his children; Charles watched the dime he had given as change turn itself over and over between his long fingers.

"I shall just have to return at a later date," Erik said, pushing himself up from the counter.

"You're always welcome," Charles said, warmly, inclining his head in the direction of the children even though his eyes didn't leave Erik. "All of you."

"Thank you," Erik said, tucking the brown-paper package beneath his arm and shaking back his sleeve to check his watch. "Ach; we have to leave now if we're to catch the last train." He nodded to Charles and stepped over to the twins. "Time to go," he said, and they looked up at him, startled.

"Thank you for the story, Miss Raven," they said, in unison, and Erik smiled in approval. Raven beamed at them.

"Any time," she said, patting their hair as she slid to her feet.

Erik helped his children back into their coats and Pietro picked up his train; before he could scoop Wanda back into his arms, however, she darted back into the shop proper and over to Charles. Hoisting herself up on the counter lip, she kissed him on the cheek.

"You're my favourite," she said, warm breath and fly-aways tickling his ear, before dropping back to the floor and scampering back over to Erik, who raised an eyebrow at her but said nothing as he settled her back onto his hip.

Charles raised a hand as they stepped out the door and Erik flipped the umbrella open in one smooth motion; the umbrella tilted in salute by way of reply. He looked over at Raven to see her wearing the oddest combination of fond, exasperated and elated.

"You two," she said, with an air of definite finality that always worried Charles, "are the most adorable thing. Ever."

"You are aware that we are not actually a 'thing'," Charles said, fingers darting in air quotes, "aren't you?"

"I don't even care," she said, beaming at him.

 

"Charles. Charles. _Charles_."

He looked up, bleary and blinking over the glow of his desk lamp at the doorway to see Raven standing there, leaning against the doorjamb. She was lit from behind by the soft bloom of the single light left on in the corridor, in case any of them needed to pad through the corridors after lights-out (stockinged feet enough to cushion the slap of bare skin against wooden floorboards, but no protection against the clutter and stacks that were staggered around every available surface in the flat), the light catching and tangling in her hair, loose about her shoulders. It threw her face into shadow, and he squinted to read her expression.

"Raven," he said, feeling his eyes pulse with the strain of focussing on her. "What time is it?"

He heard her exhale through her nose, and the sphere of light about her head shifted as she leant the side of it against the doorjamb. "Early," she said. "Charles – you should go to bed."

Shaking his head, he bent back over his work, taking up his needle and pipette. "I'm working, Raven," he said.

"You said." Her tone was unimpressed. "Seven hours ago. Charles, you can't keep doing this; you're not a student anymore. Working until the wee hours and then powering through the day on coffee and sugar alone is not a healthy lifestyle." He grunted in response, sucking his lip between his teeth as he carefully threaded the needle through the original stitch. Smyth sewn was easily the most common style of binding that he worked with and, although he had made his name and built his career upon his nigh on flawless restoration ability, it was nonetheless a laborious process, and he needed to _concentrate_.

"Are you still working on _Le Comte_?" she asked, destroying Charles' concentration despite already knowing the answer to her question. He stilled his hands, straightening his fingers and placing the needle delicately down on top of the paper.

"Yes," he said, forearms upon the desk and blinking at her shadowy form. He could make out the curve of her smile, the indentation of her dimples.

"I like him," she said, after a moment. "Erik, I mean. He's entirely adorable, even if he likes to project his ice-man-of-steel exterior." Her smile grew, teeth reflecting what little light there was. "I think he'd be good for you. A masculine presence that _isn't_ a teenaged boy. You have my approval."

"I shall be certain to tell him that," Charles said. "We shall found our entire relationship upon your belief in our sociological compatibility."

"And your mutual interest in dystopian fiction," Raven said; "and, most importantly, the fact that you want to have him fuck your brains out and then share coffee with him in the morning."

Heat flared up Charles' neck and bloomed over his cheekbones, and he glowered at Raven in embarrassment and outrage. She smirked back at him.

"Don't stay up too much longer," she said. "Dumas won't get fixed any faster if you cock up the binding."

 

Charles dreamed.

He was standing in his father's house, pristine and polished as it had been when he was a boy, before his father had died and his mother had drowned herself in the wine cellar and Kurt had burned alive in the basement. The bay windows were clean and crystal clear, and the grounds spread out before him. Sunlight was playing in from some angle overhead, dancing cloud shadows across the lawns and warming the woodwork around him.

Everything was hazy and warm and sharp, the colours saturated; the air smelt of wheatpaste and calfskin and old paper. He smiled.

 

Charles awoke.

His cheek was stuck to something: the silk-covered board that he used to protect the more delicate pieces that he was working on due to the natural hypoallergenic nature of the material. In trying to sit up, the silk and his skin seemed reluctant to part ways.

"Good morning," said Scott's voice, cheerful and brightly amused. Charles braced the silk flat and carefully peeling his face from the board. "You fell asleep in the middle of binding, so Hank and Alex moved you. Not before you got paste on your face, though."

"You don't say," Charles said, drily, rubbing an open palm against his cheek to try and remove as much of the broken layer of paste as possible. The rest would dissolve in a water solution.

"Coffee!" said Sean, grinning as he bounced into the room – and then immediately stopped bouncing, because he was carrying liquid and surrounded by paper, and there had been many unfortunate accidents before.

"What time is it?" Charles asked, accepting the mug with a nod of thanks.

"Half-ten," Sean said, and Charles almost spat coffee everywhere.

" _Shit_ ," he said, scrubbing one hand through his hair. " _Shitshitshit_."

"What?" The boys blinked at him in half-amusement, half-alarm.

"The tax returns," Charles groaned. "I needed to send them off _today_."

"They've already gone," Sean said. Charles stared at him, aghast.

"But I hadn't finished them!"

"Raven gave them to Hank," Scott said, smirking. "So stop worrying."

"She's gone on an errand," Sean said, "but she left us with strict instructions to get you fed, caffeinated and cleaned before you go return this." He held out his hand to Charles.

"A wallet?" Charles turned it over in his fingers and raised an eyebrow at them. They shrugged, but knowing amusement kept tugging at the corners of their mouth and Charles didn't believe them for an instant. There was a note clipped to the front of the wallet.

 _Official party line_ , it read, in Raven's large, loopy handwriting, _is that he left it here. Don't say I never do anything for you._

The identification read _Erik Lehnsherr._

When Charles looked up, disbelieving and incredulous, the boys' faces were the very picture of innocence.

"Well," said Sean, brightly, "I've got to go to work. Don't let the side down, now, Scotty." He winked, and clapped Scott on the shoulder as he left.

Scott looked at Charles. "Food," he said. "Bathe." He was smirking and completely serious at the same time. _Smug_ , Charles thought. _Damnit, they're conniving._

"Enjoy your lunch!" Hank said, as he left for the train station.

"You're all in league!" Charles said, astonished and not-really.

"Conspiring for your happiness," Scott said, waving as he opened the door.

 

A half-hour train journey, a fifteen-minute bus journey, a brisk five minute walk and six flights of stairs later (the elevator was out-of-order), and Charles was standing in front of the apartment listed as Erik's address. He tugged the wallet out of his coat pocket one last time, thumbing it open and checking again _just in case_ , but it matched. Unless Erik had moved, and the information in his wallet was incorrect.

He wouldn't know until he knocked.

 _Knock on the bloody door, Charles._

When Erik opened the door, his eyes widened in surprise. "Charles!"

"Erik," he said, grinning, nervousness wreaking havoc with his ability to look sane. Erik was dressed in a loose, well-worn, collarless cotton shirt and slacks, which was the most dressed-down Charles had ever seen him "You left this behind." He held out the wallet, that Erik took with a slightly suspicious look. He had paint stains on his trousers and flecked over his knuckles and the insides of his wrist.

"And you came," he said, "all the way across town, just to return this to me?"

"Of course," Charles said, all innocent smiles and wide eyes.

"Really." Erik's voice was flat, genial disbelief echoing through his tone. "You had no ulterior motive. Whatsoever."

Charles tilted his head, smiling. "Would you like to have lunch? With me?"

Erik blinked, slowly. "I'm not exactly dressed for it," he said, drily. Charles' smile must have slipped, a little, because one was chasing Erik's mouth from his eyes, dragging the corners upwards in a slow, steady movement. "But," he continued, "I was just about to make myself something. You're welcome to join me."

Charles' eyebrow twitched upwards of its own volition. "Really?" he asked, genuinely (delightedly) surprised. "I mean, yes please. That would be wonderful."

Erik smirked, and lead the way inside, Charles following wide-eyed behind him. A narrow corridor, kept fastidiously clear and entirely unlined by storage (which, Charles considered, made sense when one took into account the very width of the space, and the fact that the flat was home to two young children). Erik bade him remove his shoes when they entered the kitchen, and Charles placed them next to the neat line behind the interior door. They had passed three other doors, with the kitchen at the end of the corridor and a door out onto the fire escape on the far side of that.

The floor was smooth, brick tiles, the grouting rough beneath Charles' clothed toes, the tiles warm from the Aga. True to Erik's earlier statement, there was two slices of bread upon a chopping board, one still connected to the loaf for the final quarter.

"I was just going to have a sandwich," Erik was saying as Charles took in the room. "Gruyère. I hope that's okay."

"That sounds wonderful," Charles said, catching Erik's eye and smiling. The man returned the expression, an almost surprised feel to it, as if he hadn't been expecting to warm to Charles. "I'm afraid that I can't cook for tuppence," he said, seating himself at the table and watching as Erik finished cutting the second slice and added two more to his pile. "We tend to rely on Hank's expertise in that field. Which," he mused aloud, "it hardly a hardship – he is an excellent cook."

Erik dropped the bread onto the warming plate, and dusted his hands on the sides of his shirt as he ducked into a cupboard to take out the cheese.

"How have you managed to survive," he asked, slicing the cheese in long, smooth strokes, "without being able to cook?"

"Well," Charles said, considering the question, "I guess it's because I've never lived alone. Raven – my sister –"

"I remember," Erik said.

"– she would always make sure I ate properly, even at university. And then she hired Hank and he's a chemistry major: you know how they say the characteristics carry over into cooking."

"Someone's always looked after you," Erik said, flipping the bread over – toasting it, Charles realised, as the smell filled the kitchen.

"Yes, I suppose. In that respect, at least."

Erik glanced over at him, eyes flicking over his expression. "Does that make you the dependant of your little sister?" he asked, voice light with humour. Charles snorted.

"Excuse me," he said, in mock offense, "but there are five minors in my care."

"Five?" Erik seemed genuinely surprised.

"Hmm," Charles said, "I'm not entirely sure how that happened. I just seem to have – adopted them; or, rather, they've adopted me. You've met Hank," he said. "He was the one that took your original request for _Le Comte_ ; and then there's Sean, and Alex and Scott, as well as Raven, of course. Luckily, they all pretty much look after themselves."

Erik slid a plate in front of him, and took the seat opposite.

"What about you?" Charles asked, lifting the sandwich and taking a bite. The cheese, warmed by the bread, oozed over his tongue, the oils dissolving into the bread and coating the salad leaves that accompanied it. He half-closed his eyes in pleasure. "Erik, this is _divine_."

"Thank you," he said. "And what do you mean?"

"Well," Charles said, swiping at some escaping oils in the corner of his mouth with his thumb, "what do you do for a living?"

Erik smiled into his sandwich. "I make toys," he said.

Charles' eyebrows shot into his hairline. "Toys?" he said. "How did you get into that?"

"I used to make guns," Erik said, bitingly, blisteringly honest and entirely unshackled by it. "But my children cannot play with them."

"No," Charles agreed, after a beat. "An undoubtedly sensible career move, my friend."

Erik smiled, and something seemed to loosen behind his eyes.

"Your book will be ready by the end of the week," Charles said, after a few minutes of comfortable silence and gorgeous sandwich. "The previous owner had decided that it would be a good idea to store it outside over Spring; so, naturally, the binding had rotted away. I've almost finished re-stitching it, however."

"You do the repairs yourself?" Erik asked. "Don't you have any of your staff assist?"

Charles twisted his mouth. "Hank, maybe," he said, "but he's rather too keen on polyurethane as an adhesive for my taste. There's nothing wrong with it, but not so much for the more delicate restorative tasks."

"I see." Erik was watching Charles with a strange kind of intensity, and Charles was certain that he was taking in the faint bruises under his eyes and the reddening at the corners. "You shouldn't worry about it," he said, after a moment. "It's not at all urgent."

"Still," said Charles, and smiled.

"Ah," Erik said, "but if you keep completing all my requests so diligently, then I shall soon run out of excuses to call in to your shop."

Charles caught his eye, briefly, before dropping his gaze and grinning, stupidly, at the table.

 

"You," he said, tugging off his coat and tossing it onto the hook as the door banged shut behind him, "need to stop stealing."

Raven blinked innocently at him, and Charles attempted to give her his most stern expression, but was probably foiled by the fact that his mouth only wanted to smile. Raven's smirk only served to validate his theory.

"You had lunch with him," she said, accusatory and delighted. "Don't deny it, Xavier! I can see straight through you."

"Yes," he said, smiling and sighing at the same time, sitting down at the table. "I suspect that you can."

"So?" Raven leant forward, balancing her chin in her upturned hands and fixing him with an almost comically interested expression. "Where did you take him?"

"Actually, he made us lunch." Raven squeaked, beaming. "Just sandwiches, Raven," he added, rolling his eyes at her glee.

"But I bet they were the best sandwiches you'd ever had," she said, triumphantly.

Charles, remembering the smooth, nutty Gruyère against the sharp, bitterness of the rocket leaves, the crisp, moist bread and the slow smile of Erik across from him, humour sparkling in his eyes, couldn't deny it.

Raven's expression softened to something almost unbearably fond, and she stood, pausing on her route around the table to kiss Charles' cheek; then, juxtaposed as ever, she darted out of the kitchen.

"Charles had lunch with Erik!" she yelled, followed by whoops from Sean and Scott.

"Conspirators: success!" Sean said, punching the air and high-fiving Scott.

 

"So," said Raven, stepping into his bedroom uninvited and unannounced, and seating herself on his bed.

Charles placed his bookmark carefully between the pages of _Call To Arms_ , and looked at her, steadily. "So," he said.

"Erik." Raven was watching Charles with a very curious expression, as if her face couldn't entirely decide which emotion it was currently wishing to display. "You like him."

"Apparently," Charles said, lightly. "You were so _very_ invested in our tryst this morning, darling; I would hate to disappoint."

Raven shot him a look that was simultaneously searching and _don't joke about that, dickhead_ , and Charles schooled his face into something appropriately mollified.

"What did you do on this date, then?" she asked, leaning back against his legs, spread out in front of him on the coverlet. "Aside from just eating sandwiches, I mean."

"What, precisely, do you mean?"

Raven rolled her eyes at him. "Fine, whatever, Charlie; are you going out again? Is that why you aren't working on _Le Comte_? Wait," she squinted, suspiciously, at Charles. "You did tell him it was a date, didn't you?"

"Well." Charles laid back against the headboard, tucking his hands behind his head. "I did ask him if he wanted to _have lunch with me_ , so I'm going to go with _yes_." Raven stabbed at his shin with one finger, and he smirked at the ceiling.

"Are you going to go out again?" she asked, again. "Oh God," she added, when he didn't immediately answer. "He didn't want to, did he? It was a pity date, wasn't it? Oh my God, Charles, I'm so sorry; that's why you aren't working, isn't it? You're _heartbroken_ – I'm such an awful sister –"

"Raven," Charles interrupted, taking hold of her hands. "No. I'm not - I'm not _heartbroken_. We just didn’t – _arrange_ anything, is all."

She blinked, frowning. "So… you're not working because?"

Charles couldn't help the smile that caught the corners of his lips, nor the pleased flush that swarmed over his ears. "Because," he said, slowly, "Erik told me not to."

"Because?"

"Because," he continued, both reluctant and pleased, "then he'd have to think of new excuses to come by."

Raven squealed and threw her arms around his neck. "I'm so glad you're dating again," she said, voice muffled by her proximity to his neck. "I was worried – after the Moira fiasco –"

Charles petted her hair, soothingly. "Well, this is a change," he said, deliberately airily. "Normally, you're quite the insistent advocator of my celibacy." Raven giggled against his shoulder, and Charles was struck by a sudden flash of suspicion. "Is this because Erik's a man?" he asked. "Does he pose a lesser threat to my affections?"

"Shut up," Raven said. "It's not like that."

" _Really_."

"I just want you to be happy," she said, defensively.

"I know, pet," he said, kissing her temple.

"She demanded all of your attention," Raven said, after a pause. "All of it. It was like we were a threat to the two of you being happy and shit." Charles didn't say anything, just continued to thread his hands threw her long hair. "She would've wanted to have children," Raven said, and Charles heard the unspoken _replacements_. "And then you wouldn't have had time for m – for us. Ever."

"And Erik?"

"Already has children." Raven shifted position, slightly, pushing her face more into his shoulder. "He's already got priorities, even if he is a little too strict with them. They seemed so cautious of _enjoying_ themselves."

"So he can't steal me away from you," Charles said, ignoring the second part of her statement and smiling as he felt Raven pout against his collarbone.

"It's not –"

"I know," he said. Bending forwards a little, so that his mouth was right next to her ear (so she had no choice but to hear him), he murmured, "I will always have time for you."

"It's not that – don't let us stop you being happy," Raven said.

Charles remembered wondering how his mother could stay married to a man who so blatantly beat her son. " _You_ make me happy," he said, firmly. "The whole, mad lot of you. Nothing else will ever come first."

Raven settled, a little guilty and a lot more reassured; as her breathing was beginning to slow and her legs were twitching with the tell tale signs of imminent sleep, Charles sighed.

"You're not going back to your room, are you?"

Raven mumbled her dissent, and Charles shifted her into a more comfortable position, switching off the light before settling back onto the bed himself, and closing his eyes.

(He awoke once, when the biting cold of just-after dawn was pressing against the glass and the room was filled with almost-light resting thick and glutinous against his skin to find that Raven had drooled all over his shoulder. He considered, briefly, rolling her onto her back, but decided that he preferred the damp patch to her snores.)


	3. in which erik gives advice and sean has a date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik bent onto one knee so that he could examine their hands carefully – and Charles watched Raven watching them, and thought at her _do you see, Raven, do you see the way he looks at them; how could you ever think that he wants anything but the world for them_ , because the corners of Erik's eyes and mouth had relaxed into something fond and practised, and the twins were looking at him inspect their fingernails for evidence of missed dirt with bright eyes and laughter twitching in their cheeks.

"So," said Erik, taking a deep breath of the brisk air, "how exactly did you end up with five teenagers in your house?"

They were taking a turn around the local park, as the weather was favourable for once; and it was a Sunday, which practically required the children a trip to the play area. ("With cocoa afterwards," Charles said, and the children beamed in excitement. "But only if you're good," Erik added, firmly tugging their gloves on. Raven gave Charles a look over the top of the newspaper at he left, but he rolled his eyes at her. She hadn't seen the smile in Erik's eyes.)

Charles grinned, his hands buried deep in his pockets and his coat tails flapping around his knees as the breeze whipped leaves and dust up from the path. "I already told you that Raven hired Hank," he said.

"Yes," agreed Erik, before Charles could finish, his smirk signifying that he knew he was interrupting. "But how did he come to _live_ with you?"

"You should have seen his apartment," Charles said, half-defensive, half-amused. "It was _disgusting_ and _tiny_ and I couldn’t very well live with myself letting him languish there." Erik snorted. "It would have been a crime against humanity," Charles declared, grinning, "to allow Hank McCoy's genius to fester within a miniscule, rotting bedsit above a crack den. I had to do something. It was my morale duty."

Which managed to draw a laugh from Erik, something that made Charles feel ridiculously pleased.

"And the others?" Erik asked. "The two brothers?"

"Scott and Alex," Charles said. "Honestly, that was all Raven and Hank. Hank rescued them, Raven adopted them, I am weak-willed and now they share a room in the attic."

" _Hank_ rescued them?" Erik raised an eyebrow at Charles, disbelieving. Charles shrugged.

"He's a powerful speaker," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he simply _convinced_ the policeman to stop."

"Stop?" The tone of Erik's voice told Charles that he didn't have to answer, if he didn't want to; that it was okay to hold some things back, to keep this secret for his own.

"Apparently," Charles said, slowly, not looking at Erik and choosing his words with care, "the officer was being – over-opportune – with his baton." He had a sudden flash of the long, stripe bruises stark against Alex's pale skin, vivid where he had clearly moved to shield Scott and taken the beating over his too-visible ribs, and swallowed down bile and bitter rage.

Erik said nothing, but Charles felt the air shift between them in something like gratitude and understanding (and, Charles thought, the sense of privilege, but he was uncertain about that, uncertain why Erik would wish for Charles to burden him with his own family's past traumas when there was an empty place at the Lehnsherrs' kitchen table and a Luger in a glass case in Erik's workshop).

"And Sean," Charles said, after a moment, "practically fell out of the sky. Completely out of his head on everything under the sun and running from God-knows-what."

"If he was that high," Erik said, "how did you know he wasn't running from his own imagination?"

"If he was," Charles said, "then his imagination was rather loud, and rapidly catching up with him."

A pause, in which the air was filled with the murmur of traffic beyond the line of trees and the shrieks of children in the play park.

(Holding Sean up with an arm around his chest as he shivered and dry-heaved over the toilet basin, a thin trickle of putrid bile and saliva dribbling from between his lips. His face was damp with sweat and vomit-induced tears.

"I hate you," he snarled, voice raw and weak. "I need it. I _need_ it."

"No, you don't." Charles had been awake with Sean all through the night; there was an impressive bruise forming across his cheek and mouth where Sean had managed to boot him in the face, and he had scratches down his arms. But Sean had asked, before the withdrawal had kicked in. He'd been sober – for once – and Charles had sat him down and Sean had asked for help. So damn it all if Charles was going to let him down. "You can have the cannabis, Sean, just like we agreed. But you don't need the heroin. You don't need the acid. You _don't need it_."

"Yes," Sean had sobbed. "Yes, I do. _Please_."

"This is ridiculous, Charles," Moira said, her fingers twitching from the sight of Sean so far gone. "Take him to the bloody hospital, already."

"He doesn't want the hospital," Raven snapped, pushing past her to kneel next to Charles and wipe Sean's face, tipping a bottle of water against his slack mouth.

"It's where he should be," Moira said. "Really, Charles, you're a _professor_ , you know he needs a doctor – a real doctor, not just Hank; you _know_ he needs a hospital –"

"It's his choice," Charles said, trying to keep his voice calm as Sean shuddered and heaved again.

"He's a child, Charles. He doesn't know what he wants."

"Moira," Charles said, voice deliberately calm but bitingly cold. "If you're not going to do anything useful, _get out of my house_."

She'd returned, three days later, looking for an apology that Charles hadn't been willing to give. They remained friends, as much as they could with Moira's belated realisation that the children _always_ came first.)

"Well, Charles," Erik said, "you are indeed quite the Samaritan."

Charles laughed. "Or a gullible fool."

"I was being kind."

"And for that, my friend, I thank you." Charles smiled at him. "It's nice to be humoured in my fallacies every once in a while. Raven has rather despaired of me, I'm afraid."

Erik laughed again, and Charles caught Wanda watching them, and Pietro stopping as if by psychic communication to gaze across the park at the two of them.

"You play, correct, Charles?" He blinked, and looked at where Erik was gesturing to the chess tables, and felt a smile bloom across his face.

"Naturally," he said, "although I wouldn't wish for you to lose face in front of your children."

"Your concern, whilst appreciated, is hardly necessary." Erik's answering smile was light and easy, and Charles wanted that look to dominate all of his expressions.

Charles smirked. "We'll see. White or black?"

Erik elected black, allowing Charles to start – both a polite gesture and a method of gauging Charles' game early on; Charles wasn’t entirely sure which it was – and pulled pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, offering one to Charles.

Four moves apiece and Charles was considering his fifth; they were easily twenty minutes playing, when Erik said, his voice absent, as if the statement held no weight at all,

"You haven't returned the question."

Charles didn't look up from the board, knew that Erik wouldn't either; the only movement between them the curl of cigarette smoke as it was stolen by the breeze. "It isn't my place to ask," he said, calmly, and caught the curl of Erik's smile – pleased, relieved, because Charles _knew_ that Erik wasn't ready to tell him about the mother of his children, wherever she was.

He moved his knight, and took Erik's bishop. Erik's smile turned a little triumphant, and his pawn took Charles' knight. Charles had been expecting the move, of course, required the pawn to move in order to free the line to check, but there was something about the lowly nature of the pawn taking his best piece that dug at the rivalry built on a childhood of competitive sports and schooling.

"Check," he said.

 

The house was hardly in the best state of repair, but they made do fairly well; Hank was a more than competent electrician – although his tendencies to try and rig the wiring to be more 'efficient' almost always leant towards 'dangerous' – and the boys were more than willing to chip in with the generic manual labour.

(Sean was a monkey, all gangly limbs and strong fingers that had him hanging off the side of the building to reattach the guttering more autumns than not; whilst the rest of them stood below in the tiny yard, Raven calling distracting insults up at Sean in the hope of getting him to slip as Alex and Hank argued over the best way to seal a wooden window frame and Scott tried to convince the ratty stray to be his friend and their new mouser. Charles would hover with the ladder, and smile at Sean's fake-hurt comments about his lack of faith.)

It was all they could do to keep the damp away from the books when it was wet, and with a savagely cold winter followed by a depressingly wet spring, it was only matter of time until something went. And, in the manner of the sardonic humour of the universe, things always went spectacularly wrong at precisely the wrong moment.

Like the time that Charles had been prospecting the garden shed as an extra storage area, and the door had wedged itself shut with him inside, and no one else was home. He had ended up sitting on an upturned flower pot, making a careful, suspicious friendship with a worryingly large rat that had appeared to sniff at his foot until Alex had kicked the door in.

(Raven had been less than impressed at the news that they had rats in the garden, but Charles had no problems with them being outside. The only creatures he had issues with were mice, silverfish and moths, because they ate the binding out of books.)

This time, it was the roof above the boiler room – or, to be more accurate, the iron sheeting that they were using as a temporary roof for the boiler room; there was no warning creaking, as Charles would have expected, or any prior suspicious behaviour on its part. Instead, there was simply a loud, pulsing _whump_ and the light bulbs exploded, scattering tiny shards of glass all over Charles' study.

" _Fuck_ ," Charles spat, freezing in place and trying desperately not to move him hand. " _Fuck_ , _fuck_ , shitting _Hell_ –"

"Charles?" Raven's voice carried worried down the stairs. Charles grit his teeth and clenched his eyes shut, taking several deep, jarring breaths as he felt the warm trickle of blood wind over his hand.

"Buggering –" he snapped, automatically jerking his hand away from his books and simultaneously trying to hold it still to avoid aggravating the wound further.

He breathed sharply and fast through his nose three times as he wrapped his fingers around the handle, and breathed out hard as he tugged it free from his hand.

"Mother _fuck_."

"Charles!"

The door flew open, and he felt the air displacement as Raven appeared in the doorway.

"Careful!" he said. "There's glass all over the floor."

Raven stopped short, hovering in the doorway in her nightdress and bare feet. He couldn't see her, the pounding rain that had started a little less than an hour ago like someone had taken a knife to the heavens obscuring any moon that might had shone through the windows of his office; but he could imagine the look of her face, white and worried and angry for being worried.

"We heard you yell," she said. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," he said, pressing down hard on his injured hand with a mostly-clean rag, trapping it between his thigh and his other palm. "Fine, I'm alright. I just – I stabbed myself with the awl."

Raven snorted, but Charles could hear the throb of worry still prevalent in her tone.

"Did you check on the others?" he asked.

"The boys have gone to check it out," she said, and then gave a muffled shriek.

"Sorry," said Scott, voice small and apologetic from behind her. "Um. Charles? Are you okay?"

Charles smiled around a silent sigh, and pushed himself upright. "I'm fine, Scott. I just stabbed myself with the awl."

"You never swear," Scott said, serious and anxious.

"Because it's a filthy habit," Charles agreed. "It did _really_ hurt, though." He slipped his good hand into Scott's; the boy might have been twelve, but he gripped it tightly. "Let's go see whether the other's have managed to set anything on fire yet," he added, leading the way towards the back.

"But it's _pouring_ out," Raven said.

"And that's stopped them when?" Charles asked, and felt Raven's eye roll at the back of his head.

 

Alex, Hank and Sean were standing around the wreck that had been the boiler room; the roof had completely caved in, dragging the tops of the exterior walls with it; the boiler itself had managed to escape damage due to its saving grace of being against the interior wall, and so shielded from the collapse. The fuse box, however, was undoubtedly a mangled mess beneath the brick and iron.

As they approached, remaining in the doorway as protection from the sheeting rain, Sean picked up the broom, flipped it so he was holding it by the brush and cautiously prodded at the wreckage.

The pile flashed and sparked, and the three boys leapt back.

"Poking it with a stick," Charles said, drily. "Very scientific, boys."

They turned, Sean flexing his grip on the broom handle guiltily.

"Charles!" Hank said. "Are you okay?"

He waved his hand at them. "Stabbed myself," he said.

"Again?" Sean said, raising an eyebrow.

"That last time was not my fault," Charles said, accusatorily. "I wasn't the one who left the rake out."

"Inside," Raven said, clearly tired of the bickering; she was watching the remnants of the fuse box warily, "before you guys get electrocuted. And," she prodded Charles in the shoulder, rather harder than necessary, "I'll need to bind your hand, mister."

"Yes, mother," Alex said, smirking; Raven shot him a glare as they all trooped back into the darkened kitchen, the boys dripping everywhere.

"I'll, um, find some candles," Hank said, wiping his glasses on his sleeve and only really succeeding on smearing the water across the surface.

"Good idea," Raven snapped, tugging Charles down into a seat and glaring into the darkness until the match flared, sulphur-bright, and Hank set the candle down next to them.

"Ow," Charles said, sardonic, as Raven peeled off the rag with savage force. She glared at him.

"Baby," she said, reaching behind her to tug open the drawer, pulling out the first aid one-handed. Her mouth was twisted sideways as she examined the hole in Charles' palm, and he recognised that she was being rough because she was worried about him. He nudged her ankle under the table, and her gaze flickered up to his. "Idiot," she said, but the tightness in her face relaxed somewhat. "Who stabs themselves with an awl?"

Charles hissed as she applied the iodine, the brown tincture staining the skin yellow around the wound and mingling with the blood still dribbling from it. "They're drills, Raven," he said. "They're supposed to be sharp."

"Yes," she said, threading the crescent needle to stitch the skin together, "but they're supposed to drill through inanimate objects. Not your hand."

"Shut up," he said, cheerfully.

Sean was sweeping the floor, knocking whatever might be on it out into the yard; a sensible precaution, Charles thought, remembering that his entire study was probably coated in glass.

"I'll make some tea," Scott said, eyes on Charles' hand.

"Not with the kettle!" Charles said, sharply; Scott's hand stopped mid air. "Boil it on the stove," he said. "That's gas-powered; we don't want to risk the electricals until we know how bad the damage is."

"Right," Scott said, changing direction to dig the old whistling kettle out of the cupboard.

Raven cleaned the stitches carefully with Dettol and cotton wool, her movements more gentle now; she had clearly got over her fright at Charles' outburst upon injuring himself, and her anger over being frightened by it. The Dettol and iodine smells mingled in the air, filling the kitchen with a clean, sterile smell as the stove clicked alive and the water stared to shudder within the kettle.

"There," she said. "Lucky the awl is tiny; better than the rake, anyway."

Charles grumbled in his throat, experimentally flexing his hand and feeling the tug of the stitches against his skin. "Yeah, well," he said. "It was an interesting experience, anyway."

"You re-enacted a scene from _The Railway Children_ ," Sean said, propping the broom against the wall and grinning, his teeth glinting in the candlelight. "That's got to be the geekiest injury yet."

"At least I do it with class," Charles said. "Thank you, Scott," taking his mug one-handed from him, the tea swirling dark and steaming as he sipped it. "Where's Alex got to?"

Scott glanced over his shoulder, and Alex reappeared from the corridor, stripping off the heavy, rubber-lined gloves that they used for the rewiring.

"I've disconnected all of the appliances," he said. "In case of shocks and shi– stuff."

"Good idea," Charles said, smiling as Alex joined the table, accepting his tea from Scott. The six of them sat in silence, listening to the rain shatter off the flagstones outside, and the hiss and spark of the fuse box. Charles would have covered it with tarpaulin, to stop the danger from the loose electric current, but the rain caused an extra hazard in an of itself; if the electricity sparked whilst they were standing out in it, then there was no telling whether they would be shocked or not.

"We can't afford an electrician, can we?" Scott said, after a long minute. Charles sighed.

"We'll get by," he said. "We always do."

"The shower's electric," Raven said. "Even if the boiler's gas-fired. We're going to have to take baths, now."

Hank rubbed his forehead with the heel of one hand. "Rebudget for the whole year," he said.

"In the morning," Charles added, firmly. "We all need to sleep this off, first; come back to it with a clear head and, with any luck, a dry day to solve it under."

"Yeah," Alex said, nudging Scott with his shoulder. "Hank can do most of the wiring, anyway. And we can rebuild the shed, no problem. A good excuse to do that remodelling that Charles has wanted."

"Does this mean that I'm going to have to spend days tiling again?" Sean moaned. "Tiling is really fu– bloody. Really _bloody_ boring."

"Don't use English swear words," Raven said. "You can't pull them off."

They abandoned their mugs in the sink, for dealing with in the morning, along with all the other problems the night had brought, and padded single-file up the narrow staircase. Charles tugged off his clothes and pulled on his pyjamas, falling sideways onto his bed.

A moment later, he threw back the covers on the unoccupied side and shuffled closer to the edge.

"Come on, Raven," he said. "I'm not waiting all night."

There was a flurry of movement and the bed creaked as Raven clambered in; and then shuffling sounds from the rest of the room. Charles opened his eyes to see the others creeping in, Hank and Alex and Scott making piles of bedding on the floor whilst Sean claimed the ancient, dilapidated armchair, spreading his long legs out onto the windowsill.

"Goodnight, everyone," Charles said.

"'Night, Charles," the boys replied, sounding only a little caught-out.

Raven prodded him in the small of his back as she shuffled closer. "You know you love it," she said.

"Oh, drat," he said, grinning into his pillow. "That was supposed to be a secret."

 

Charles woke the next morning to find his room empty, with only the piles of sheets and pillows folded neatly into the corner any sign that the children had slept in there at all; also, his clock informed him that it was half-past ten. Swearing under his breath and into his pillow, he forced himself upright, hissing and biting the inside of his cheek when he pulled the stitches in his hand.

He slumped downstairs, the need for caffeine his only driving force; he almost caught his foot on the stairs, his bare toe clipping the edge of the step and causing him to stumble. Rubbing a hand over his face as daylight assaulted his vision, he blearily entered the kitchen to see Erik Lehnsherr sitting at his table.

Blinking, he stopped short, and stared at him. Erik was holding a cup of what smelled suspiciously like coffee, which distracted Charles enough from the smirk that was fighting to appear on Erik's face as he saw Charles.

"Morning!" Raven trilled, appearing from nowhere at Charles' side and handing him a cup. "Did you sleep well?"

Charles gave her as accusatory a look as he was capable of, refusing to be fully placated by the gift of coffee. "Why didn't you wake me?" he asked. "And why –" he shifted his gaze to Erik– "why are you here?"

"I called him," Raven said, her chipper tone grinding against Charles' still mostly-asleep brain. "He's an engineer by trade, you know."

"Yes," Charles said, rubbing between his eyebrows. "Of course. I'm going –" he waved his free hand vaguely behind him.

Raven beamed at him, and Erik called after, "nice pyjamas, Charles."

 

Charles stuck his head under the faucet in an attempt to both tame his hair, which had never grown out of its desire to defeat basic physics and almost always ended up vertical when he awoke, and to wake himself up. The cold water ran down the back of his neck and into his eyes, clearing the sleep from his eyes and the fog from his brain; and he suddenly realised that he had just stumbled into his kitchen, in his pyjamas, with Erik sitting as his kitchen table.

He resisted the urge to just hide in the bathroom (because he was an _adult_ , God damn it), and instead settled for knocking his head mournfully against the lip of the sink; which hurt, but made him feel a little better.

Rubbing his forehead and shaking the water out of his eyes, he dressed quickly in casual clothes, the shop obviously not being able to open due to the lack of electricity. They really should have woken him up; there was almost no way that the boys hadn't managed to kill themselves in his absence.

 

"Your faith in our abilities is flattering," Sean called, from where he was wedged between the house proper and the outbuilding, "but you really needn't have worried."

"We've got it all under control," Hank added.

"A lie," Raven said, leaning against the doorframe. "But whatever. You'd almost electrocuted yourself eight times before Erik arrived."

"Why did Erik's arrival stop Hank from being electrocuted?" Charles asked, dragging his eyes away from where Sean was shuffling about over empty space, disconnecting the external electricity lines from the transformer.

"He turned off the electricity," Raven said. Charles stared at Hank, who had the good grace to look rather embarrassed.

"Henry McCoy," Charles said. "You have – how many degrees? – and you didn't think to _turn off the electricity_ before playing with the shattered fuse box? _What were you thinking_?"

"Sorry," Hank mumbled. Alex, who was supervising Scott nailing together a temporary house for the boiler, looked up at Charles tone. A pink flush was spreading up Hank's neck. "It won't happen again."

"Damn straight," Charles said, looking back up at Sean just as he slipped, whitewash and grit skidding down the wall to clatter onto the flagstones.

"I'm okay!" Sean called, catching himself on the edge of the roof.

Charles rubbed at his temple. It was going to be a long few days.

"They're really very capable," Erik said, appearing at his side and watching Sean cut the wires. "You should be proud."

Charles sighed. "You're encouraging them to perform unnecessarily dangerous acts in the name of DIY," he said.

"They haven't died, yet," Erik pointed out, "or killed anyone. That's something, isn’t it?"

Hank was carefully dismantling what was left with the fuse box, the line of his back clearly indicating that the sting of Charles' reaction was still being felt. He sighed again.

"You're probably right," he said, reluctantly. "I'm sure I couldn't do any of this without them, anyway. I'd just have Raven, and she's pretty useless at man's work."

A lump of mortar smacked into his arm. "Hey!"

Raven glared at him from the doorway, already rearmed. "Man's work?" she said, flinging another lump, which Charles dodged. "What does that make you then, nerd boy? You've never done a day's manual labour in your life! _Hank_ has done more 'man's work' than you. _Hank_!"

"Thanks," Hank said, drily. Sean had been forced to pull himself onto the actual roof; he was laughing so hard at Charles attempting to avoid being hit that he had been in danger of falling.

"But you can paint!" Charles said. "That's what you do!"

"That's woman's work, you mean!" Raven was a surprisingly good shot. Charles was definitely going to bruise.

"Sexist, Charles," Erik said, grinning. "There's no reason why a woman can't do anything a man can do. Brave new world."

"No," Charles said, stopping and pointing an accusatory finger at Erik. "Side against me with my sister all you want, but you _don't_ get to quote Huxley at me. You haven't even read the book!"

"Oh my _God_ , Charles!" Raven stopped hurling rubble at him to stare in laughing disbelief. "You are _such_ a nerd!"

"What's going on?"

Pietro appeared at Raven's hip, white-blond hair falling into his face and paint all over his hands.

"You brought your children to my building-site of a house?" Charles asked, turning to Erik, who shrugged.

"Raven called, and they don't have school today – free babysitting," he said.

"In payment for services rendered," Raven said.

"What, precisely, does that entail?" Charles asked.

"Raven said your shed exploded," Erik said. "I'm going to help rebuild it. Engineer, remember."

"Right." Charles looked around the yard, at where the boys were all occupied, and at Raven, who was apparently supervising Erik's children. "Right. Well. I'll be cleaning my study if you need me."

 

There was glass _everywhere_. The force of the electrical feedback from the collapse had caused not only the lit bulbs to explode, but every other bulb in the room to do so as well; and, due to the nature of Charles' work, there were a lot of lights. He could only be grateful that he hadn't been using adhesive when they blew.

As it was, it looked to be merely a laborious sweep-up; some of the glass pieces were so small that Charles was fairly certain he'd have to go through the bindings of some of the books with a fine-toothed comb in order to clear them out fully.

His palm itched around the stitches, and it twinged savagely as he flexed his fingers. It was going to be a long job; not only would he have to be supremely thorough in his cleaning, but he wouldn't be able to go as quickly or efficiently as he otherwise would with one damaged hand.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he sighed at the mess of his study, before straightening his back and picking up the dustpan and brush.

"It's the job that never gets started as takes the longest to finish," he said to himself, and grinned.

 

Cleaning was always therapeutic. The physical process is in itself a repetitive one, which is why Charles had detested it so as a child – it offered no interest or challenge – but as he grew older he realised that it allowed his mind to wander; and, in cleaning things, it was almost as if he could clear out his thoughts.

When he was younger, he had combated the boredom that inevitably walked hand-in-hand with tedious tasks by attempted to memorise whatever text he had been reading, reciting it aloud to himself as he worked. It was a habit that he'd never really grown out of. Which was why he was currently, on his knees, carefully dusting glass of a stack of books and talking to himself in a low voice:

"The afternoon buzzes like lazy bees round the flowers, round Mae Rose Cottage. Nearly asleep in the field of nanny goats who hum and gently butt the sun –"

"– she blows love on a puffball."

He twisted around, almost dislodging both the books and the dustpan but managing to do neither, just, to see Erik standing in the doorway.

"You know Thomas?" he asked, surprised. He wouldn't have thought it was to Erik's taste.

"Burton sends my children to sleep most effectively," Erik said, by way of explanation.

"He does have the most soothing cadence, doesn't he," Charles said, smiling.

"Hank says that lunch is ready," Erik said, leaning back out of the doorway. Charles got to his feet, dusted off his knees.

"Excellent," he said. "I missed breakfast. And this is the perfect opportunity for you to try Hank's savoury range."

"It's just sandwiches," Erik said.

"Yes, well," Charles said, tilting his head and smiling. "Sandwiches are my favourite."

"I'll need someplace to wash up," Erik said, as Charles stepped out into the hallway.

"Yes," Charles agreed, glancing down at his own, dishevelled state, "I probably should to. The boys'll be using the kitchen; come on."

He lead the way upstairs to the single bathroom: tiny and cramped, with a bath that was barely five foot long and a shower head that, despite being wedged into the highest position, still forced Sean to hunch to get underneath it; the sink was practically hovering over the toilet, which made it useful for when there had been a really bad bout of stomach flu going about but was otherwise a hazard for knees.

With practise, it was still possible to get three people in there at one time; four, if two were sharing the shower. Charles sat on the rim of the bath, remaining upright only due to years of practise and his heels braced against the base, as Erik carefully scrubbed his hands, wrists and forearms clean of brick dust, dirt and grease.

"I never thanked you," he said, abruptly, watching the muscles shift in the small of Erik's back as he rubbed a lather around his nail beds. Erik glanced up, catching Charles' gaze in the mirror. "For coming over," Charles clarified. "I mean, there was no reason for you to drop everything and come to our rescue."

Erik smiled, a crinkling of one cheek, the lines spidering out from the corner of his eye as he dropped his gaze back to his hands. "I could hardly leave you to burn," he said. "The children would never have forgiven me."

Charles raised an eyebrow. "I had no idea that they were so fond of the place," he said.

"Not at all," Erik countered, lightly. "Pietro merely disapproves of any fire he doesn't start himself."

"Pietro likes to burn things?" Charles asked, surprised. "I would've thought he was a little young to have discovered such infatuations."

"One can never be too young," Erik said, moving to lean one shoulder against the doorjamb so Charles could access the sink. "He's rather more fond of creating friction fires, however; so there's never any real danger of him setting the flat alight."

Charles glanced sideways as he carefully cleaned his hands, trying his best not to rub soap into his stitches; but Erik's expression was one more of fond amusement at his son's antics than of any parental irritation. Erik must have caught his gaze, because one eyebrow twitched minutely.

"It's no more dangerous than the other things that eight-year-olds become obsessed with," he said, blithely.

"Like what?" Charles furrowed his brow, trying to remember what he had been obsessed with when he was eight, other than books and staying out from under his stepfather's palm.

"Soil, dog shit," Erik said, waving a hand as if to encompass all other kinds of dirt that pre-pubescent boys like to examine and, presumably, ingest. "It's far more difficult for him to hurt himself trying to start a fire than it is eating animal faeces."

"True," Charles conceded, and then hissed as he accidently washed soap into the wound. Erik's gaze zeroed in on his hand as Charles ran it carefully under the cold tap.

"What happened to your hand?"

"Nothing," he said. "I mean – our blackout startled me somewhat and, ah, I may have stabbed myself through the hand."

"I see." Erik's expression was in danger of making Charles flush, and he'd already embarrassed himself enough for one day; Charles concentrated on drying his hands rather than look at the other man.

"It's only a tiny hole," he said, "really; it probably won't even scar. Raven does an excellent job of stitching me up. Last autumn, I stood on the rake – it went right through my foot, and fractured my knee. The doctors were worried that I might not be able to walk on it again."

He turned, and saw Erik still watching him with his eyebrows drawn together, the corners of his mouth beginning to angle down; his gaze was on Charles' leg, as if he could tell which one was injured even through Charles' trousers.

"Hey," he said, cocking his head and giving Erik what Raven called the 'reassuring smile'. "It's no one's fault, there's no lasting damage; everyone wins."

"No lasting damage," Erik repeated, still watching Charles as he lead the way back down towards the kitchen.

"Well," Charles admitted, "I won't be running any marathons again, but apart from that –" He shrugged. "I've no complaints."

 

Lunch threatened to be a subdued affair, with Hank evidently still feeling the lash of Charles' earlier rebuke; but Raven had knocked his ankle under the table and Charles asked what he thought their best options were for replacing the fuse box, and everything shifted back to normal. Hank spent most of his explanations darting his gaze between Charles and Erik, as if to confirm his postulations with the professional; Erik didn't dispute any of Hank's ideas other than to query how, precisely, he would effectively transmute the kinetic energy of a basic hydro pump into decent electrical output, and Charles rapidly lost track of the conversation as they slid deeper and deeper into technicalities.

There was also the small fact that the other boys were rapidly coming down from the adrenaline high of the morning – one that Charles was all too familiar with, the one that grips tight to the scruff of the neck and jolts you through the day with _yes, yes; there's something I can do_ \- and were drooping over their sandwiches, ploughing through them dully and waiting for the energy kick.

Whatever lethargy the boys brought to the table was completely cancelled out by the twins, however. Raven had been right about them being ridiculously well-behaved for a pair of eight-year-olds, but she appeared to have made it her personal mission to drag the twins out of their shells and force them to have _fun_. Raven's idea of what eight-year-olds should deem as 'fun' mostly seemed to involve anything that made a lot of mess.

She still, obviously, had problems with the way that Wanda and Pietro were _so_ well-behaved (despite the fact that Charles had tried to explain that maybe, _maybe_ , that was how normal eight-year-olds behaved, and she had just been ridiculously rambunctious), and still evidently blamed Erik for being overly-strict with them; when they had first sat down for lunch, the twins had come barrelling into the kitchen covered in dried paint and food colouring and flour, and had skidded to halt in front of Erik, hands held palm up.

Erik bent onto one knee so that he could examine their hands carefully – and Charles watched Raven watching them, and thought at her _do you see, Raven, do you see the way he looks at them; how could you ever think that he wants anything but the world for them_ , because the corners of Erik's eyes and mouth had relaxed into something fond and practised, and the twins were looking at him inspect their fingernails for evidence of missed dirt with bright eyes and laughter twitching in their cheeks.

"Satisfactory," Erik declared, and the twins beamed at him before clambering up to the table.

"Raven let us paint her wall!" Wanda said, practically glowing with excitement. Erik twitched an eyebrow at Charles, who flicked his gaze skywards as if to say _it's her wall; since when did she listen to me, anyway?_ ; Raven threw him her favourite desquamatory look that Charles had long since developed resistance to, and simply raised his eyebrows at her, slightly.

"I painted a dinosaur!" Pietro said, enthusiastically. "With robot _augmentations_." He said the last word slowly, carefully enunciating each syllable, and then beamed when Erik inclined his head, slightly – an indication that Pietro had said it correctly – and waggled his hands on top of his head to demonstrate.

"And then I drew a troop of ninjas!" Wanda said. "Loads of them! With katanas and _shuriken_ and everything! Because ninjas could _totally_ beat a dinosaur."

"Nuh uh!" Pietro protested. "The only way your stupid ninjas would win is because there's _loads_ of them and that's like cheating."

"Cheating's only bad if you get caught," Wanda said, primly. Pietro scowled at his sister, chewing furiously on his sandwich; Erik was calmly working his way through his own, projecting an air of practised innocence despite the topic of conversation between his children.

"You didn't just paint, though, did you?" Raven hinted, stepping neatly into the gap in the argument to direct it elsewhere.

"No," Wanda said, before Pietro interrupted,

"We made cakes!"

It was positively amazing how rapidly the boys perked up at the mention of 'cake'. Charles bit down on his smile as they focussed in on the far end of the table, where Raven was opening the massive tin that Charles was certain had once been used to house his tools; he'd wondered where it had got to.

"Rainbow cake!" Wanda said, beaming, as Raven held one out to demonstrate. "We were going to choose one colour each;"

"But then we couldn't decide which one we wanted," Pietro said.

"And so, instead of getting food colouring everywhere," Raven said, handing the twins each a cake, "we decided it would be best to swirl them all in."

Charles looked down at his cake with minor trepidation; it did look suspiciously like Raven and the twins had simply up-ended the bottles and folded the colour in (Charles was grateful that Raven knew not to stir it, at least not very much, or else it would have looked unappetising rather than just amusing), and Charles knew the layout of the kitchen well enough that there was probably a bunch of flavourings thrown in there as well.

He caught Alex looking at his cake like it might spontaneously grow legs and run away, whilst Hank was blinking at it like the colours were hurting his eyes, and Scott was grinning at it like it was the best thing he'd seen in ages. Sean, however, took it calmly in his stride, and was already halfway through his.

 

"So."

Erik and the twins had left, Wanda and Pietro visibly lagging as Erik bundled them into coats and shoes, Raven having fulfilled her task as babysitter and worn them out; but they didn’t leave before extorting a promise to come back tomorrow from their father, who'd glanced briefly at both Charles and Raven for permission before agreeing.

Now, Charles was sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by papers; his last cup of tea had cooled before he'd finished it, but it was now full again and steaming, and he blinked at it in confusion for a few seconds before registering Raven's presence opposite him. The boys were there as well, all taking seats around the table.

"How're we looking, prof?" Sean asked, characteristically blasé.

"And don't lie," Raven said, with her own special brand of fierce seriousness. "I can always tell."

Charles sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yes, you can," he said, pushing himself back from the table and taking a sip of his tea. He looked at them, his odd little family, all of them evidently worried by displaying it in entire different ways; Raven's rigid posture was practically oozing furious determination, Sean and Alex the most nonchalant of the five – but Charles was fairly certain that Alex especially was feigning it for the sake of Scott, who was looking at the papers on the table with a mixture of anger and nervousness. Hank was blinking very quickly but evenly, which Charles took to mean that he was probably trying to work out how fucked they were in his head.

"We are going to have to make some serious cutbacks," he said, keeping his voice calm and easily meeting each of their gazes. "Even if we do all the work ourselves, we still need to buy all of the equipment necessary to fix up the fuse box and reattach it to the grid; and all of the materials to rebuild the boiler room. Not only that, but we're going to chalk up some serious expenses simply due to the fact that we're going to have to work around not have electricity."

"Well," Scott said, after a moment; Charles looked at him, and he was still frowning at the table but he didn't seem to be too worried about the situation. "We can use public services for, like, a lot of washing and stuff –"

"Ew," said Raven, "but he has a point. Doesn't your school have showers that you can use?"

"We could ask Armando to move back in," Alex said.

He was watching Charles with an almost challenging expression on his face, as if daring Charles to say that it was a bad idea.

"He could share with me," Sean said, with a shrug.

"Sean," Charles turned to face him, "you have the smallest room."

Sean shrugged again, meeting Charles' incredulous gaze with his own, rather more relaxed version of _fuck you_ ; the one that angered his teachers when Sean turned it on them, when he had clearly won the argument and they refused to admit it. "We can build bunk beds," he said. "It's not like I haven't shared before."

Charles rubbed his finger over his eyebrow, easing the beginnings of a tension headache he can feel building behind his eyes.

"Sean," Charles said, again, as if repeating his name will make him listen – a tactic that Charles uses without thinking about it, now, even though it never works; perhaps because it never works. "I cannot ask you to share your room with Armando. It's basically a _cupboard_ –"

"Darwin wouldn't care," Scott said, his eyes lit up with the idea of Armando moving back. "He didn't mind when he had to share with us."

"We were going to suggest that one of us move in with you," Alex said. "And then Darwin could have their place."

"Wait." Charles looked very hard at the boys, narrowing his gaze. "You've already asked him, haven't you?"

"We – we _might_ have mentioned something," Hank said, guiltily. "But think about it, Charles: Darwin would be another person to split the utilities between, and he's more than capable at manual work."

"It makes sense," Scott pressed, gazing at him earnestly.

"And then, of course," Raven put in, "there's my trust fund."

"No," Charles snapped, wheeling on her. "No, I am _not_ letting you blow away that money on this."

"It's my money!" Raven said, angrily. "It's _my money_ , as you are so damned fond of telling me –"

"That money is supposed to go on your education," Charles said, "or a house in Bermuda, or a – bright pink stretch limousine!" He sighed. "Darling, that money is there for you to be entirely selfish with," he said. "Not to bail me out."

"But I don't _want_ to be selfish with it!" Raven snapped. "I _want_ to be able to fix up our house; I _want_ to be able to see you sleep more than twenty-six hours in a week; I _want_ you to let me do things for you!"

"Selflessly selfish," Charles said, his smile crooked and self-deprecating. "I'm sorry, but I can't. Too arrogant, I suppose, to take money from my baby sister."

"What if you don't have a choice?" Raven said, her eyes flashing. "What if it's a choice between your stupid pride and the house – your livelihood, our entire life?"

"Then, dear Raven," Charles said, "I'm sure you'll be there to box my ears and knock some sense into me."

"Is that a yes to Darwin, then?" Scott asked, eyes bright and hopeful. Charles pressed the heel of his hand into his eye, and sighed.

"Yes, I suppose. If he wants to."

"He does," Scott said, quickly, beaming. "Can I run down to the depot and tell him? Please?"

"I'll go with him," Alex said, with a quick grin of his own, standing and catching his brother by the neck of his t-shirt before he'd escaped completely out of the door. "Coat, Scott."

"What about Erik?" Hank asked.

"Oh, God, yes," Charles said, putting his head in his hands. "He'll want to be _paid_."

Raven snorted. "Maybe in ways that only you can provide," she said, smirking; Hank and Sean winced, Sean whining,

" _God_ , Raven; some things we just _don't_ need to hear."

Charles flushed up the back of his neck; Raven could tell. She had a wicked glint in her eye.

"I mean, seriously, Charles," she continued, "how many dates have you been on now?"

"I don't recall," Charles said, weakly.

"Liar," Raven said, smirking. "Have you even kissed him, yet?"

Sean pushed his fingers into his ears and screwed his eyes shut, singing 'Here I Am, Lord' to drown her out; he missed, therefore, Hank fleeing the room.

Charles didn't reply, and Raven _oozed_ triumphant glee.

"I hate you," he said.

"Oh, hush," she said, patting the top of his head.

" _The finest bread I will provide, until their hearts be satisfied_ –"

"Sean!" Raven snapped, flicking a cake case at his head. "For God's sake, shut up."

 

It was a late night for all of them; there was still an awful lot to do just to tidy up the house, let alone prepare things for the following day's work. Charles wondered just how, considering the physical size of the apartment, it managed to house so much _stuff_. Sean calmly informed Scott that this was because the house was bigger on the inside; when Hank added, sarcastically, that old money families obviously had many such heirlooms of scientific anomaly, Sean shushed him with a correction of 'magic'.

Scott had found it hilarious, up to and including Sean's declaration that, because the house was indeed bigger on the inside, thus it should be perfectly feasible for him to fit all of their things into one cupboard. Alex, opening it a few minutes after the boys had forced it shut, was promptly buried under a myriad of pointless items, and spent the best part of an hour chasing Sean around the house with a broom.

They only escaped a minor incident by the arrival of Armando; he had been passing on the way to pick up his next client, and stopped by to drop off his diesel-powered generator. Hank had immediately set about designing the best set-up for lighting the shop – because there was no way they were going to able to afford repairs without opening – whilst Raven made tea and Sean, Scott and Alex made excited conversation that was mostly them quizzing Armando on what he'd been up to in the hours of the day that the elder boys didn't see him at the café.

Charles had managed to catch him just before he disappeared to finish his shift.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked, leaning against the wall of the corridor, arms folded. Armando turned around, his hand on the doorknob. "Get back into this crazed family? We've got a lot of baggage, Armando."

Armando nodded, and grinned easily. "I've dealt with my shit," he said. "Besides, I kinda missed your crazy."

 

Charles wasn't certain as to whether the children slept in his room again, because he was still in his office when the grandmother clock chimed half two. He'd heard them troop upstairs at various points before midnight, Scott worrying about where Armando was going to sleep before they put a bed in for him.

The office was dimly lit, more so than usual; Charles had refused to have the generator stored in there, both due to the damage the fumes would do to the books and because of the noise, and so he was using a camping lamp balanced on the end of his desk. The quality of light once you moved over two feet away was incredibly poor, but seeing as Charles hadn't moved for over three hours he hadn't actually noticed.

He took a drag of his cigarette, smoke folding out of his nostrils as he reached blindly over for his coffee. It had gone cold; Charles' face wrinkled automatically at the taste, and he noticed Raven standing in the doorway.

"How long have you been there?" he asked, downing the remainder of the coffee and grimacing as he replaced the cup.

"Long enough," she said. He couldn't see her face – because Raven, apparently, had preternaturally impressive night vision, and so regularly wandered around without a light where mere mortals would immediately slip and break their necks – but he could hear the blatant disapproval in her tone. "Charles, you need to sleep."

He didn't look up as he shuffled papers around his desk, trying to find the right one. "No, I need to get this done."

" _Charles_ –"

Charles leant back in his chair, balanced his elbow on the arm and observed her silhouette in the doorway. "Well, then," he said, taking another pull. "What would you suggest we do about all these outgoings that need to be rebudgeted; or, perhaps, you have an idea on how to increase our income by three times our monthly revenue in order to cover the cost of the repairs?"

Raven's outline shifted, upset. "Charles," she said, again. "Please. You're not going to be any good for any of us if you don't get some sleep."

"I'm not going to be good for any of you unless I get this sorted, either," he replied. "And I think this is the slightly more pressing matter, don't you?"

He heard her pass someone on her way along the corridor, and Armando leant in through the doorway.

"Alright, boss?"

"Armando," he said, dropping the butt into the ashtray. "I know you said that you're happy to move back in here, but I'm not entirely sure you've thought this through."

Armando steps inside the room, manoeuvring stacks of books and papers with practised ease to seat himself opposite Charles. He always managed to project an air of confidence and ease that Charles appreciated, mostly because of the endlessly calming effect his presence had on any room. He folded his hands in front of him, interlacing his long fingers, and waited for Charles to continue.

"It's not that we don't all love having you," he began, "because we really do; you're great with the kids, and it's really good for the boys to have someone to look up too."

"Apart from you," Armando put in, and Charles smiled crookedly.

"I don't think that they're really going to follow in my footsteps," he said, "except for Hank; and he's already done the academia thing to death."

Armando just watched him, in his quiet way, until Charles had the feeling that he was being disagreed with. He sniffed, blinked, and continued.

"Yes, well. The thing is, Armando, we're not exactly swimming in space here. And I know we worked it out before – and Sean's offered to have you share with him, which was nice of him, if a little impractical –"

"Why?" Armando asked.

"Did he offer? Probably something to do with you being –"

"No," he corrected. "Why would it be impractical?"

" _Because_ ," Charles sighed, and leant forward on the desk, "Sean's bedroom is tiny. You'd be sleeping on bunk beds. And, besides; Sean's quite a bit younger than you. Are you sure you wouldn't mind sharing with him?"

Armando shrugged, one shouldered. "No, man; Sean's a good kid. I hear he's dry now, though," he glanced at Charles for confirmation, "so I guess I'd be missing out on his hilarious trips." He caught Charles' sceptical gaze, and shifted himself forwards a little. "Charles," he said, seriously, "I've been sleeping on the depot sofa and in the back of my cab for the past two months. I've slept in far worse places than that in my time. Trust me; your place? Like a _dream_ compared to what a lot of us go through."

They shared a long look, and Charles huffed an assent through his nose.

"Only if you're sure," he said, rubbing his temple as he looked at Armando. "I don't want you putting yourself out just to keep the boys happy."

He grinned. "If I didn't know you better, I'd be offended at the fact that you keep saying it's just the kids that want me here. But I know it's because you're just too emotionally constipated to properly display your affection for me."

Charles laughed, properly laughed despite his headache and the fatigue dragging at his joints like fever-swelling, and scrubbed his hands over his face.

"That is definitely the problem," he agreed, still smiling. "My repressed upbringing has squashed all ability to show affection from my being; I'm so grateful that you're astute enough to notice, Armando. Pray, stay and teach me how to properly express myself."

"Well," Armando said, grinning and stretching his arms over his head, pulling his spine until it popped, "seeing as you asked so nicely."

"On occasion, I have been known to remember my manners."

Armando pushed himself upright using the arms of the chair. "I'd best be heading up," he said, heading over to the door. "Don't you stay up too long now, boss. Leave the budgeting until the morning, at least; and wait to talk to this Erik cat about the repairs before you give yourself a stress-related heart attack."

Charles saluted him with his pen, and said, "Armando?"

He stopped, one hand on the doorjamb as he leant back around it.

"It's good to have you back."

Armando smiled, and tapped the jamb as he left.

 

Charles didn't go to bed. He did put the budgeting aside until morning, both taking Armando's advice and because he was terrible at doing so effectively when sleep-deprived. There was plenty of other work that he needed to complete, however, including a rebinding of _Madame Bovary_ for a customer that had inherited it in a particularly sorry state. When Charles had originally taken the commission, the customer had mentioned that they'd had trouble finding a decent restorer before, for other books that were falling apart. He was hoping that, should they approve of his work, he might be able to get another commission from them. Collectors of earlier editions tended to be willing to pay rather a lot more money for a decent job.

Moira had also given him a heads-up concerning a couple of people she knew from work who were looking for some rarer editions; she never failed to send people his way, despite their differences. If it weren't for the fact that Charles had five dependants and his livelihood to care for, they would have made an excellent couple. As it was, their individual career paths took them in opposite directions; Moira spent all day picking up after thankless people, and all she wanted when she clocked off was to relax. Charles spent all day amongst literature, one of the great loves of his life; so when _he_ clocked off, he was more than willing to offer his time to the children.

It probably didn't help that they were as stubborn as each other. It made for a wonderful and always interesting friendship, though.

 

He'd been working on the cover for a couple of weeks; the customer was willing to pay extra for him to recreate the original, first edition cover, and Charles was more than happy to comply.

There were several books that he had previously recovered from a similar period, and he had been able to get his contacts at the library to let him take a set of detailed photographs of a first edition they had in storage (although they'd left a security guard in the room with him; apparently they were worried that he might run off with it).

Despite the fact that the boards and leather had succumbed worryingly to rot, the binding itself was more or less intact, meaning that Charles would simply have to restitch it into the spine once he'd finished it.

He moved the lamp closer to his position, mounted the leather onto his desk easel, and continued to carefully emboss the spine.

 

Raven found him at eight am, still carefully pressing gilt into the design. She stepped cat-like across the room, and touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. His face was cold.

"Charles," she said, when he looked up, irises quivering as they attempted to focus on her face, "it's time for breakfast."

"Yes," he said, dazedly, "in a minute."

She didn't move, rubbed her thumb over his cheekbone and into the edges of his hair. He leant into the touch, ever so slightly, and she felt him sigh.

"Five and a half grand, Raven," he said. "Just for a recover. You know how much that means to us."

"Of course," she said. "But it can wait a few hours whilst you eat, and sort out what we need to do today."

Charles didn't say anything, but after a long moment he laid down his tools and pushed himself upright, and she knew she'd won, at least for now. She hoped that the reappearance of the Lehnsherrs later on would distract Charles from working himself into the ground long enough to get him to relax. She followed him as he wandered towards the kitchen, stretching the kinks from his back; pressing her fingers into the corners of her eyes, she stimulated enough moisture to conceal the glaring bloodshot nature.

When Charles didn't sleep, he wasn't the only one. Of course, she would never tell him, because he did so enjoy the illusion that his martyr complex offered him; that he was the only one suffering and, in doing so, was protecting the rest of them from it. He always seemed to forget that fretting about the welfare of the family wasn't a trait that he alone carried, and Raven would often lie awake, listening to see if Charles would come up the stairs.

(She supposed it was a reaction learned from childhood, but she didn't fear the sounds of Charles' sock-clad feet creaking up towards her. Instead, she lay awake listening to the sounds of her brother shuffling around downstairs, and waiting for him to haul himself up to his bedroom. She could always tell that it was him over one of the boys, because Charles limped slightly after a long day at his desk. It was so different, so completely different to how she had felt as a girl, listening for the heavy tread on the stairs outside her room.)

Raven didn't sleep when Charles didn't sleep, because she lay awake wondering if she was going to lose the only family she had.

The boys had already congregated around their tiny table (and Raven made a mental note to get Alex to build them a larger one, because they _really_ wouldn't all fit now that Armando was back); Sean appeared to be sleeping standing upright, his head resting against the cabinet with his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling steadily, as the kettle shook and bubbled below him.

Armando and Scott were making breakfast, Scott still mostly asleep but happily pouring milk into the bowls of porridge that Armando passed him. Alex, as usual, appeared to be trying to drown himself in orange juice. She caught Hank's eye, from where he was setting the table and trying to fit an extra chair into non-existent space: _did he sleep?_. She shook her head, and he closed his eyes briefly in agitation, his mouth twisting.

 

Someone had pressed a mug of coffee into his hand – he assumed Sean, because he had been manning the kettle, but he could never really be certain whether Sean was actually present first thing in the morning, because his eyes never seemed to focus properly before nine-thirty – and Charles inhaled the promise of caffeine. The coffee helped him come alive properly, and he couldn't help but smile at the way that Scott was practically falling asleep in his porridge. He only seemed to be upright because Alex and Sean had braced him between them.

Charles wondered just how long Scott had stayed up the night before, waiting for Armando to come back.

"Oh, here," he said, just remembering, and passed a book over the juice jug to Armando. "I thought you might like this."

"Murakami?" Armando said, turning the paperback over to read the blurb.

"Hey, isn't that the _Wind-Up Bird_ guy?" Hank said, looking up from his bowl.

Charles nodded. "You said you liked Vonnegut," he said to Armando. "So you'll probably like that."

" _Hear The Wind Sing_ ," Armando read. "Sounds cool. Thanks."

"Do you know when Erik and the kids are coming round?" Hank asked Raven. "I wanted to talk to him about amping up the generator."

"If you break that –" Charles started.

"Then I don't care," Armando interjected. "It's a piece of junk, and I don't use it anymore. Have at it, Hank."

Raven smirked at Charles, who rolled his eyes at her, and burned his tongue on his coffee.

"Erik said something about ten o'clock," Raven said, "but I don't know how punctual he'll be."

"But he's German!" Sean protested, grinning. "Do they have another setting? Like their watches; always on time."

"That's Swiss clocks, Sean," Charles said.

"And German trains," Raven added.

"For God's sake, Raven," Charles said, putting his head in his hands as the rest of the table appeared to conspire against him. "It's far too early to bicker with you."

"Banter, sweetie," Raven said, patting his head with a patronising hand. "There's no animosity, not from my end at least."

"What did I do to make you hate me?" Charles groaned into his hands, and Sean started laughing.

 

Much to Raven and Sean's endless delight, Erik did indeed turn up at ten o'clock on the dot, twins in tow (literally, because they were bickering over something and not managing to focus properly enough to keep step with their father). Charles could tell that Raven was going to rib him for that later, and he could only pray she wouldn't break out the innuendo. After the initial greeting, the twins and Raven disappeared off to clear out and paint the shed (for some reason that Charles could not fathom), and Hank immediately engaged Erik over the generator.

Charles, checking that everyone was okay and no one was doing anything potentially suicidal (Armando grinned at him, and assured him that he'd keep an eye on everyone; Charles had rolled his eyes at him in return), disappeared back into his study to continue work on the cover.

Now that it was daylight, he was able to open the blinds enough to illuminate his work; even the cloud-wrapped daylight was better than the tent-light that he had been using the night before, and his eyes welcomed the rest. He flexed his shoulders and cracked his fingers, and bent back over the leather.

 

He emerged, a few hours later, to find Erik crouching on tarpaulin in the yard, his fingers crooked around and behind part of the generator engine; it had been stripped of the casing, which was lying in oily pieces around Erik's knees. He had oil on his arms and his shirt, and smeared across his neck where a part of the generator had brushed against it. Free hand occupied by tilting the generator up onto its rear supports, Erik was smoking hands-free, cigarette clamped between his teeth as he found the washer that had slipped down into the engine by feel alone.

Charles turned on his heel, and went back inside.

Lunch must have come and gone, because when Charles next looked up to alleviate the crick in his neck that was threatening to seize up his entire spine, Erik was leaning against his doorframe, watching him.

He'd cleaned the oil from his skin, and he was wearing the same loose, stained shirt that he had been in when Charles had returned his wallet; so it was already beyond saving, and the oil stain looked dark and fresh smeared across it. Charles could see a smudge of dark under his ear that Erik's missed. It was very distracting.

"Erik," he said, blinking focus-strain from his eyes. "How goes the great generator experiment?"

"Pretty good, actually," Erik said, not moving from his position in the doorway. But Charles didn't stand either. They just remained where they were, staring at each other across the room. "Hank overestimated the generator's capacity, and it had a far bit of junk stuck in it; but Darwin seems to know his way around an engine, so it wasn't in too bad a shape."

Charles smiled. "Armando's surprisingly good at most things," he said. "If he wasn't so damned nice, it would be wonderfully easy to hate him."

Erik grinned, a quick flash of teeth. "It's powerful enough to light the shop," he said. "Just as long as you don't overheat it, or try to overrun its capacity, it'll happily cover it. I can set it up for you today, if you like."

Charles blinked, surprised. "That – would be fantastic, actually," he admitted. "I didn't think you'd have it up and running so soon."

Erik shrugged. "Like I said, it was already in pretty good shape," he said. "Anyway, that's not why I'm here. Darwin said you wanted to see me? But I can come back later, if you're in the middle of something."

Shaking his head, Charles stood, careful not to push his chair back too far and unbalance the tools precariously placed behind him. "No, that's okay," he said. "I was thinking of taking a cigarette anyway. Care to join me?"

As they walked up the stairs to the roof, Charles caught sight of the time – and how the hell had he managed to work through the entire afternoon without realising it? – and grabbed a cardigan from the top of the banister before leading Erik out of the window and onto the flat roof above the kitchen.

"Are you sure this is sensible?" Erik asked, as Charles lit two cigarettes simultaneously, passing him one. "Standing on the roof."

"The boiler room was poorly built," Charles said. "We'd already shored it up with corrugate, and it was leaking all the same. But the rest of the house is pretty solid."

"'Pretty solid'," Erik repeated, raising a sceptical eyebrow and smirking around his cigarette. "I don't doubt."

"We haven't died yet," Charles said, grinning.

Erik pushed his free hand into his pocket; he was only wearing his t-shirt, and presumably was cooling down rapidly now he wasn't working. "Well?" he said. "What did you want to talk to me about that we had to hide on the roof to discuss?"

Charles huffed a laugh, smoke billowing in one smooth stream towards his feet, and flicked his eyes up to Erik’s face.

"I am a grown man," he said, his attempts at affront sabotaged by his smile. "I don’t need to 'hide on the roof'."

"And yet," Erik said, with the merest hitch of an eyebrow, "here we are."

"Yes," Charles said, and let a smoke curl out from between his lips with the barest exhalation to speed it along; playing for time as he considered how best to frame his next statement. "Look, Erik; about paying you –"

Erik half-closed one eye, and blew smoke at the moon that was emerging as the sky grew dark around them. "I don't want you to pay me," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Charles stopped short, squinting at him.

"What?"

Erik blinked at him, his eyebrows twitching together and his mouth lifting upwards into a half-smile. "I don't want you to pay me," he repeated. "Surely it's not that hard a concept to understand; or did I slip into German?"

Charles waved a hand, scattering smoke across his face where it stilled and curled into his hair. "I speak German; that wouldn't have made a difference," he said, distractedly. "Why don't you want to be paid? I can't let you spend all of your time helping us out for free. I mean, you have your own work –"

"I'm self-employed," Erik said, "so I can do 'my work' as often or as little as I choose."

"But that's exactly my point!" Charles said. "If I don't pay you, then you aren't earning; and you have a family to keep, Erik."

"I am aware," he said, amusement thick in his tone.

"I can't," Charles said, shaking his head as if that would help him get through to Erik. "I can't let you spend all your time here and you not get anything out of it."

"I wouldn't say nothing," Erik said, his smile curling into a smirk, his eyes still on Charles.

Charles felt a flush run hot needles from the small of his back up his spine; his ears burned in the cool air. The streetlights flicked on, the filament blinking twice before catching with an indistinct buzz. It cast yellow light through the gaps between the buildings to fall on Erik's face, hi-lighting the sharp contours of Erik's face: the sharp edges of his cheekbones and the hard line of his brow. Charles' gaze caught on the way the shadows pooled below his lower lip.

"Free babysitting, for example," he continued, once Charles's ears had gone a suitable shade of red, and Charles cursed him mentally. "My usual sitter is currently out of town, so your little emergency was timed rather well."

"Erik," Charles began, sighing and running a hand through his hair.

"I grew up in care," Erik interrupted, abruptly; a muscle in his cheek twitched. Charles stopped, watching him carefully and pretending not to notice the way that his shoulders hunched forwards and his hand curled into a fist in his jeans pocket.

"In a home?" Charles ventured, after a moment, when Erik chose to chain his cigarette without expanding. "Or –"

"Oh, no," Erik said, his grin fixed and full of too many teeth; the look his gave Charles heavy with scathing self-loathing that stabbed nails into Charles' abdomen. "There were plenty of places willing to take _me_ on."

Charles' weight shifted to his toes, but he didn't move, afraid of making Erik clam up just as he was starting to share. "I'm sorry," he said, instead, knowing that many foster homes could be far worse than the poorly-managed state care homes, who were plagued with too little funding and too few care workers and too many children to keep a proper track of. "Did they –" He paused, uncertain of how to go on; but Erik caught his meaning.

"No," he said, firmly, "no, nothing like that. Sebastian was more interested in moulding me into his 'perfect son'."

"Erik," Charles said, now taking the step forwards to put his hand on Erik's arm, unable to keep his distance at the bitter, angry twist to Erik's voice. Erik flashed him a grin that was lighter on the self-hatred and more towards self-deprecation, shaking his head and rubbing the side of his thumb between his eyebrows, the glowing tip of his cigarette drawing abstract images in the air.

"You know," he said, "I still can't figure out if he actually believed that the beatings would make me better, or –"

"If you were just a convenient outlet," Charles finished, and twisted his mouth wryly as Erik looked at him in surprise. "I never did, either; I don't think anyone ever does."

"Well," Erik said, and Charles was struck by how close they were standing. He could feel the heat rising from Erik's skin, belying the raised hairs on his arms. "I appreciate what you're doing for these kids, Charles. I never did anything to help the ones like me. Consider – it's like this job is my payback. Like you're my catharsis."

"I don't want to hurt you," Charles said. Erik smiled, actually and genuinely and Charles didn't know how to read everything that was written into the lines it drew on Erik's face, and touched the backs of his curled fingers to Charles' jaw. His skin was cold, and the ash-cloaked end of his cigarette burned next to his cheek.

"You have no idea," he murmured, staring at where their skin touched, at the way the light from his cigarette covered Charles' skin in a bloom of orange that slid between his eyelashes to throw shadows across his temple.

Inside, someone called Charles' name, and Erik dropped his hand and stepped away as Alex clambered out of the window. He hesitated momentarily at the sight of Erik, before purposefully locking his gaze onto Charles.

"I need to talk to you," he said, the tone of his voice and angle of his shoulders clearly demonstrating that he wouldn't take no for an answer.

Charles glanced at Erik, who quirked his eyebrow and took a last drag of his cigarette before flicking it away into the alley and ducking back inside the house. He tried to ignore the wrench in the pit of his ribcage, and turned to look at Alex, arranging his features into an appropriate expression and smiling, lightly.

"Alex," he said. "What can I help you with?"

"I won't let you," Alex said, stepping forwards and crowding over Charles, his entire body tense, his eyes angry and determined. "I won't let you ruin our lives."

Charles frowned. "Alex," he said. "I don't –"

"If the house isn't fixed," Alex said, keeping his voice low but there was an edge to it was screamed desperation, and it clenched around Charles' heart, "if you aren't earning enough to keep us, then we'll be taken away." His eyes, even lit poorly from the street, are wild, and his fingers keep clenching and unclenching in his palms. "I'm almost eighteen," he said, his voice growing hoarse. "They'll separate us."

"That isn't going to happen," Charles said, but Alex evidently wasn't reassured.

"Scott deserves a childhood," he hissed. "I won't let him be put back into the system, Charles; I'll kill them first."

"Alex," Charles said, voice firm and gaze direct. "I am _not_ going to let that happen. I promise you."

"What if we can't afford to live here anymore?" Alex asked, his voice accusing.

"Then I'll sell the stock," Charles said, regretting the hollow sound to his voice but unable to keep it out. "I'll sell up, and take that job for the university, and we'll move closer to the city centre."

Alex blinked. "But," he said. "But you hate that job. You said it killed your soul."

Charles shrugged. His smile felt wrong on his face. "It pays," he said. "Well enough to keep all of us somewhere where the house actually works. I won't let them take you, Alex; and I would _never_ let them split you and Scott up again."

His jaw loosened, slightly, and he dropped his gaze to his shoes. "What about Erik?" he said. "I thought – don't you two –"

Charles sighed, and offered him a cigarette. "Alex," he said. "In case you haven't got it through that thick skull of yours, you always come first. You, Scott, Raven, Hank, Sean. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

"What if something happens to _you_?"

"Then I name Armando your legal caretaker, and Moira will help you take custody of Scott once you're old enough."

Alex mouthed 'oh', and smoked his cigarette silently. Charles crushed his beneath his toe and squeezed Alex's shoulder as he climbed inside.

 

Armando took one look at the size of Sean's room and went to check with Erik and Hank whether it would be possible to fit wall beds.

"It's basically a galley room anyway," he said, when Charles had looked sceptical. "having Murphy beds will make moving around so much easier, especially for all of Sean's limbs."

"Will they take the weight, though?" Raven asked, looking up from where Wanda was painting her toenails (she was sitting in Raven's lap, her dark hair gathered over one shoulder in a loose plait; the tip of her tongue was poking out of her mouth as she held Raven's big toe still with one hand, and carefully painted violent pink with the other).

"Are you calling me me fat?" Sean said, mock-offended, and Raven poked him in the ribs with her free foot.

"They aren't difficult to build," Erik said. "And we could add legs, if you're worried." He flashed Charles a smirk, and Charles was filled with the irrational urge to stick his tongue out at him. He was acutely aware of how Raven and the twins were watching them, Pietro looking up from where he was reading next to Raven's chair.

"Well," he said, "if it's what you're happy with, then I can't see a problem with it."

"Not that it matters right now," Alex said, dropping Scott's coat on his head and grabbing his keys from the sideboard, "because we've all got to go."

Sean checked the time on the clock above the door and swore, tumbling sideways off his chair and dashing up the stairs to find his uniform. Raven gave Wanda and Pietro a stern look.

"You heard nothing," she said.

 

Raven and Hank disappeared to drop the twins off at school, leaving Erik and Charles alone in the house. Charles tried very hard not to think too much about that as he followed Erik through to the shopfloor, where he'd set up the generator.

He'd connected extension cables already, and Hank had taped them around the walls of the shop; Charles hefted the box of hanging lamps that had been in the shed when he had first moved in (which was something that he never really liked to look too closely at), and slid the roll of duct tape over his arm.

"What are Hank and Raven going to do until you reopen?" Erik asked, carefully attaching the lamp to the ceiling.

"For work, you mean?" Charles watched a little apprehensively as the light swung from its new fastenings, but it didn't fall. "Hank tutors, and Raven teaches ballet, when she can get the work."

Erik blinked at him. "Really?" he said, passing Charles the blown bulb from the original light.

"It's a little difficult for her to find anywhere willing to take her on," Charles admitted, "but last time she managed to get holiday cover for three weeks, which was hugely helpful."

"But no luck this time." Charles was most definitely not looking at the way Erik's t-shirt rode up as he taped the wiring to the ceiling.

"Evidently not," he said. "But you never know."

Erik grinned at him. "Ever the optimist," he said. "As it happens, though, I know someone who might be able to help her out."

"Really?" It was Charles' turn to be incredulous. "You know people in the ballet-teaching community?"

"I wouldn't exactly call it a 'community'," Erik said, "and I have a very varied friendship circle, thank you."

"I'm sure," Charles said, smirking. "Do you have weekly meetings, where you sit with tea and biscuits and discuss the idiosyncratic nature of your friendship?"

"You're just jealous I've never invited you," Erik said.

"Yes, actually." Charles was grinning as he passed Erik the next lamp. "And here I was, thinking that we were friends –"

Erik's fingers wrapped around Charles' as he took the lamp from him, and Erik was looking at him with an unreadable expression on his face.

"Does this mean you want to downgrade our friendship?" he asked, and Charles' mouth answered of its own accord.

"That depends on what you mean by _down_ –"

Erik's eyebrows shot up into his hairline, and Charles' face flamed; he let go of the lamp as if it had burned him, and stepped backwards just as the door chimed open. Desperately grateful for the distraction, Charles darted to the end of the stack.

"Moira!" he said, attempting to sound calm. _Save me_ , he thought, and hoped he didn't look too manic as he enveloped her in a hug.

The stiffness of Moira's spine indicated clearly her surprise at Charles' sudden embrace, but she returned it nonetheless, wrapping her arms around his back and knocking her bag against his hip.

"If you weren't usually so tactile," she said, when they had separated, "I'd be more than a little inclined to believe that something's wrong."

"It's been a while," Charles said, smiling at her. "How's Kevin?"

"Better than he has been," Moira said, some of the tension that she had been carrying across her upper back when she walked in seeping away as they slid into comfortable territory. "I mean, I don't quite know how I'm going to cope when he learns to walk, but – I've been trying to teach him about _not_ swearing, actually."

Charles laughed. "And how's that venture going?"

Moira's mouth fell into a squint that Charles recognised as simultaneous amusement and annoyance. "Not hugely successful, I have to admit," she said. "But he's stopped yelling curses at strangers on the bus, now; so that's progress, I guess."

"Of course," Charles said. "Although I did always enjoy the looks of horror when people realised that Kevin was hardly the cherubim he appears."

"I was well-versed in that from when I was dating you," Moira said. "Comparatively, Kevin's a _dream_."

"Moira, darling, you _wound_ me." Charles pressed a hand over his heart in mock injury. "My heart positively bleeds at the suggestion that I was a source of any mortification."

Moira rolled her eyes, but she was smiling; even so, Charles couldn't help but notice the way the action enhanced the depth of the bags under her eyes, elegantly concealed with make-up though they were. She looked more tired than Charles had seen her since their university days, and he was well aware that it was far harder to bounce back from sleep-deprivation now that they were older. His smile softened around the edges – Moira noticed, and her eyes narrowed.

"Is that _pity_ I see in your face, Charles Xavier?"

"Never," Charles assured her. "I wouldn't dream of pitying _you_. Not when you so thoroughly disciplined me against it."

"Damn straight," Moira said.

"And you wonder where Kevin gets his potty mouth."

Moira hit him. "Bastard."

"You've clearly been spending too much time with Raven," Charles said, rubbing his shoulder.

"Naturally," she said. "We meet up and gossip about you; mostly about your ridiculous infatuation –"

Her gaze shifted from Charles' face, settling on a point over his shoulder, and heat spread pickling up Charles neck; realisation flickered behind her eyes, and something worryingly like amusement spread over the curl of her mouth.

"Ah," she said. "You'll be the famous Erik, then."

"Famous?" Erik's voice was carefully light, just enough interested bemusement filtering through to create conversation. "I cannot imagine why."

"Oh, but Charles talks about you all the time!" Moira said, clearly choosing to ignore the control behind Erik's tone and angle the conversation in a direction designed purely to further Charles' embarrassment. "So I've heard a _lot_ about you."

"Really." There was a smirk in Erik's voice; Charles did not need to turn around to see it. "Only good things, I hope."

"But of course," Moira said, and she was grinning at Charles, now, evidently enjoying his mortification to a degree of sadism that he normally equated with Raven. He wondered just how often the two got to catch up, and whether Raven had embroidered upon the details of his so-called 'infatuation'. Although he wasn't entirely sure if that would be a positive thing; Raven's ability to be cutting was rarely ingratiating, and she had expounded to him often enough about her opinions concerning his relationship – or lack thereof – with Erik. "But don't be fooled by his professorial airs; Charles can bitch with the best of them."

"I'll bear that in mind," Erik said, and Charles decided that it was high time that he re-inserted himself into proceedings before it got rather out of hand.

"Erik," he said, "this is Moira MacTaggert; Moira, Erik Lehnsherr."

"Introductions are rather redundant at this stage, don't you think, Charles?" Erik said, striding forwards to shake Moira's hand.

"Shut up," Charles said, and Moira's poor attempt to smother her grin had him flash her a scowl. Which did nothing to dampen her smug air.

Charles grinned. "Do you want some tea?" he asked. "You can euphue upon my dazzling quantities further."

Moira laughed, and shook her head. "As much fun as that sounds," she said, sarcasm drawling through her tone, "I really have to go." She held up her bag, which was overfull with manilla folders. "We're really swamped in the office right now. If Gabby hadn't called me in, I wouldn't even be thinking of heading over – I was supposed to be spending the week with Kevin. But, well. _C'est la vie_."

She turned around as she was half out the door; the edge collided with her arm as she fumbled in her bag, pulling out a crumpled slip of paper. The words were scrawled across it in marker pen, the ink showing through on both sides.

"Shit, I almost forgot." Moira shoved the door back on its swing with her shoulder, and caught its return with her foot. "I've got a request for you; Reed was hoping you might be able to find it before Christmas. I think he's planning on giving it to Franklin."

Charles raised an eyebrow as he read the title. "Franklin's, what, five? Wouldn't something a little – sturdier be in order?"

Moira shrugged, forcing her bag closed. "I'm just passing it on," she said. "It's up to Reed what he wants to give his kids. Give Raven my love!"

Charles waved her off; letting the door close with a chime, he turned to smile brightly at Erik.

"Tea?" he offered. Erik raised an eyebrow at him.

"It's barely eleven o'clock," he said. "And don't think you're going to slide out of explaining what Moira was talking about."

 _Oh God._ Charles scrubbed the side of his face with his palm, and tried desperately to think of some way to get out of it without sounding like a teenager with a poorly concealed crush. The problem was, if Raven (and Moira, apparently) was to be believed, that was precisely how he had been acting.

"Moira and I met at university," he said, grasping at a different thread of the conversation. "We dated, for a while; but it didn't really work out, and now she's married. Kevin's her son. He's, well, he has some problems. There were some – incidents – when he was a baby, and his brain development isn't really where it should be, considering his age."

Something shuttered in Erik's face. " _Incidents_ ," he said, voice flat. Charles pressed his lips together before he could school his face into careful blankness, but that apparently told Erik everything he needed to know; his gaze left Charles to stare out through the window in the door, as if he could follow Moira's progress up out of the sunken courtyard and on the bus into work.

Guilt squirmed up Charles' spine, because he should never have allowed Erik to even suppose about aspects of Moira's life that she didn't let him into, not really. Although, when she called him at three AM because Joe had come home drunk and she had left the apartment in a hurry, he could not escape the cold, hard reality of their relationship. But it was Moira's call, it had always been her call if she wanted to ask for help. They had been down that road before, and all that it had caused was bitterness and resentment.

The slam of the back door heralded the return of Raven and Hank, unless Alex had done something stupid at work again and had been sent home.

"Charles?" Raven called, her voice muffled slightly – presumably by her scarf, because she had a poor habit of talking whilst covering her mouth. She was particularly bad with jumpers, although Charles was monumentally glad that they had dealt with her sexual awakening rapidly and with only a few moments of painful embarrassment concerning her nudity. Taking her with him to university had not only been a necessity – he could hardly leave her behind – but it was also incredibly good for her to immerse herself in society other than Charles'. He hadn't approved of several of her ventures, but he had been assured that their furious rows were perfectly natural of siblings. Most of all, he had been very clear about his support and approval for her independence as an individual – something that Moira had advised him to vocalise rather than assume that she knew.

"Teenagers are in a constant state of confusion," she had reminded him. "You have to _tell_ her things, Charles. You can't just take for granted that she _knows_ that you love her whatever she does."

"In here," he answered. Appearing around the stacks, Raven pulled an overly-unimpressed face at the lack of progress that had been made since she left.

"Seriously?" she said. "This is all you guys have done since we left?"

"Moira stopped by," Charles said. "She distracted me."

"Excuses, excuses," Raven said. "No one likes a cop out, Charles."

He wrinkled his nose at her, to which Raven smiled, wide and innocent, and Hank seemed to be trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible behind her so as not to get himself dragged into the conversation. Raven had a rather worryingly _physical_ habit of getting Hank to do her bidding, especially when it came to winding up Charles.

"I was going to make tea," he said. "Would you like some?"

"Always," Raven said, tossing her scarf across the counter (something that she did, Charles was certain, because she knew it annoyed him; and also, undoubtedly, because he was hardly the tidiest of people and she loved being able to call him a hypocrite) and sliding her arm through his. "Growing up with you, Charles, darling? How could I not? He's positively _addicted_ ," she said, over her shoulder to Erik, who was following them through - clearly, he understood the uselessness of trying to persuade Raven out of anything. Charles determinedly ignored the warm, quivering feeling in his chest at how quickly Erik had slotted into their lives.

"I had an English mother!" Charles protested. "Britain built an empire on tea; how was I supposed to avoid it?"

Raven laughed, dropping Charles' arm to slide into one of the chairs around the kitchen table. Erik sat down opposite her as Hank filled the kettle and sparked the stove.

"So, Erik," she said, putting her chin in her hand and watching him with slightly too much sparkle in her gaze, "what did you think of Moira?"

Erik raised an eyebrow. "'Think'?" he repeated. "Well, I could certainly see why she and Charles got along - she talks far too quickly."

Raven laughed again, delighted, and Charles could see Hank's smirk over the mugs.

"But," he said, and then stopped, clearly deciding that it wasn't really his place to finish the sentence. Raven's face closed, her mouth tightening at the corners, and she shot a look at Charles.

"'But'?" she said. "Did she stop by because -"

"No," Charles interrupted, quickly. "No, she wanted to drop this off." He fished in his pocket for the scrap of paper Moira had handed him. Raven tugged it from his fingers, and her eyebrows darted upwards in surprise.

"Seriously?" she said. "Whatever could she want with this? It seems a little out of her usual reading bracket - and price range."

Charles shrugged, rolling his shoulders forward and accepting the cup from Hank. "It's for Reed, apparently. He wants to give it to _Franklin_."

"Oh my God," Raven said, rolling her eyes. "Well, that explains it."

"Reed has a strange idea of what children enjoy," Hank said, to Erik, sitting down slowly and rather warily next to him, as if he was expecting Erik to glare him into moving further away.

"Is this Reed Richards?" Erik asked.

"Because 'Reed' is such a common name," Raven said.

"By which she means 'yes'," Charles added. Raven stuck her tongue out at him, sipping her tea carefully.

"Well," Erik said, raising his own tea, "that's explanation enough, isn't it?"

Hank frowned. "You know Reed Richards?" he asked, clearly confused by this piece of information. Charles suspected he was slotting it away under 'unexpected data - treat with caution'; sometimes, he worried at just how much information Hank kept in his mental files of them all, and what he might do with it, one day, should the need ever arise.

Erik looked at him. "I know of him," he said. "I did some contractual work for his company, when I was still with the firm."

 _The Firm_ sounded like it ought to be capitalised, like The Circus or The Industry. Charles wasn't entirely certain why it came across as so threatening in his head.

"He always did seem something of an eccentric," Erik added.

Raven smirked. "Oh, yes, because you would _never_ hang around with eccentrics," she said, looking sideways at Charles, who flicked her ear.

"I'm not an eccentric," he said.

"You're extremely lovable," Raven said, as if that made everything better. "Unlike Reed, who is rather a lot of a dick."

"Raven," Charles said, warningly, but Raven merely tossed her hair and looked at Erik.

"Have you got anything that you're supposed to be doing today?" she asked. "Apart from saving our lives, of course."

Erik smirked, a hard, amused slash across his face. "You sell yourself too short," he said. "Saving your lives is practically a full time job."

Raven grinned, viciously, as if she had walked him right into her trap. Charles had a terrible feeling about this conversation. "Does that mean you'll be staying?" she said, her voice smooth and almost predatorial. She reminded Charles uncomfortably of the stray cat that Scott was always trying to befriend, in the way that it purred as it sank its claws into his hand. Never Scott's hand, Charles had noticed; but then, he had a terrible track record with animals. They always seemed so much more personable when dissected and perserved in vinegar in the university chem labs.

Erik's smirk spread into something drawling, if that was at all possible for an expression, and _oh, God, he's going to play her at her own game_ , Charles thought. _How the Hell do I end up surrounded by these people?_ He looked to Hank for support, but Hank was apparently engrossed in trying to learn to read tea leaves in the dregs at the bottom of his cup, and refused to meet his gaze.

"Is that an invitation?" Erik said, almost lecherous, now; it sent a jolt of heat up Charles' spine to mingle with the icy sludge of embarrassment that was spreading across his lungs.

"We're _very_ well bred," Raven said. "Charles has us all _wonderfully_ trained. He's nothing if not hospitable."

 _Oh my God_ , Charles thought. Hank, if the rigid hunch of his shoulders was anything to go by, was thinking similar thoughts.

"That's highly reassuring," Erik said, not once taking his eyes off Raven. "I was afraid that you were all feral, and might _bite_ me."

 _Oh my God_ , Charles thought, and stood, abruptly. "I, uh," he said, and fled the room, leaving his tea to grow cold on the table. Raven and Erik's laughter followed him, mingling as he darted into his study and sat as his desk, determined to disappear behind his pile of work.

 

"Well," Raven said, leaning against the doorway. Her amusement was still rich in her tone. "That was hardly polite, Charles. Perhaps Erik was right to worry that you might bite him."

Charles put his face in his hands, undoubtedly smearing ink around his eyes.

"Raven," he said. "Please tell me that you really are trying to kill me; because if you're doing this by accident, I don't know how I'm going to survive."

She crossed the room with a few soft, cat-like footsteps, remnants from her ballet training, and kissed the crown of his head. "Relax, big brother," she said, her voice perhaps too fond. "I promise not to scare him away."


End file.
